Simon Says

by William Poe

  Back at the projects, I parked in front of Violet’s, then walked to her brother’s place. One of the well-dressed men took the rental papers from me and checked over the agreement. There was the name, Joyce Briggs, as an authorized driver, and an open-ended approval, as requested. They could use up to $1,000 dollars, but I didn’t see how they could run up that much just going to Memphis and back. BT asked me to wait again in the smelly back room, but only moments later, he came and got me, saying to follow him to his place.

  The Memphis group had left. “Did everything work out? Did you get the drugs?” I asked.

  “Bouilla!” BT smiled.

  Sean got out of the car when he saw us approaching. Cicero barked until we disappeared into BT’s apartment. Violet and the kids were no longer on the couch. Gone to bed, I assumed. BT led us into the small room where I’d first smoked with him. When we were settled on the floor, knee to knee in a circle, I introduced Sean, saying, “This is a friend of mine from LA.”

  BT produced a bag from the inside of his greatcoat and placed it on the floor between us.

  “At least a half ounce,” I said, picking up a small rock and rolling it around my tongue.

  BT took out a pipe and fired up a piece. His eyes went from narrow slits to bulging golf balls. When Sean did a blast, he held his hands over his ears to fend off the familiar noise that always hounded him when he got high. Before I fired up, and while my friends were too high to notice, I took a chunk into the front room and placed it behind Violet’s lamp. I returned to the circle and did a blast. The room transformed into a whirling carnival ride as the walls began to spin around me. Sparks ignited in the air, as if matter and its opposite had met within my own mind and begun to self-annihilate. Shapes began to materialize—first BT reappeared, then Sean took form.

  BT’s eyes went back to normal. He summed up the experience pretty well, exclaiming with a laugh, “Da-yum!”

  CHAPTER 43

  Sean and I checked into a cheap hotel on the outskirts of Little Rock and finished up our drugs. Before crashing, I decided to use my last ounce of energy and try to make it to Sibley. It was the middle of the night when we crept into the house. I taped a note to the refrigerator saying that Sean and I were upstairs in my room, that we’d come down with something and needed to rest. I locked Cicero out of the room, knowing that once I fell asleep, I might be out for days, and that Connie would surely take care of him. Sometimes he’d scratch at the door. I’d think about the Giant Rat of Sumatra from Sherlock Holmes and remember the phrase: it is a story for which the world is not prepared.

  “Simon! Simon!” someone called out as they banged on the door.

  I opened it just enough to see who it was. A hand shot through and grabbed my arm.

  “You look like shit,” Thad said, taking me by the shoulders.

  “Yeah, I get that a lot.”

  I went to sit on the bed next to the Sean, still asleep, with his head bound in a T-shirt.

  “Connie was about to call the police to come check on you.”

  “God forbid she should just knock on my door.”

  “She said she’s been knocking on it all day. Derek even tried to climb up the trellis, but he was too heavy for it.”

  Thad followed me down the hall to the bathroom. I was so weak, he had to help me onto the toilet.

  “Thad,” I said, mortified by my condition, “why are you coming back into my life? Why now?”

  “It’s simple. I love you.”

  All manner of protest entered my thoughts. But then, here I was, a derelict, not the successful businessman living in fabulous houses. And yet, Thad had used the word love. I love you.

  Thad got the shower started and slipped out of his clothes before helping me inside. He wrapped a strong arm about my waist and soaped me up. When I was clean, Thad found an electric razor in a drawer that must have belonged to Lenny and supervised a shave.

  “Your hair is so silky,” Thad said as he ran a comb through after getting out the tangles with a brush. “I never noticed how baby fine it is.”

  “You never noticed a lot of things.”

  “I know. I should have been more attentive.”

  “What does Vivian think is going on?” I asked as we left the bathroom. “Is she okay?”

  “I called her just before I was ready to leave LA in the truck, and again when I was on the way. She said you had come in during the night and holed up in your room. I tried to cover for you, saying that we had spoken and that you and Sean had the flu, and that you were worried about her catching it. She went to Connie’s house with Cicero. I drove by there first and picked up the house key. Connie is really upset that you would come into Vivian’s house with a virus. Then, when she couldn’t get you to answer the door, she was afraid you’d lapsed into a coma or something.”

  “Glad you got here before Connie called the police.”

  Sean appeared in the hallway. He’d slipped into his jeans but was shirtless and shoeless. He glared at Thad.

  “Fucker!” Sean screamed. “Who the hell’s that?” Then, switching tactics, he affected a pout and said, “The two of you pushing me aside?”

  I approached and pulled his head to my chest. “Thad brought my things from LA. He’s not here to push you out.”

  “You better go now, Thad,” I said, pointing my chin toward the stairwell.

  “Your things are in the basement,” Thad said, pausing to consider his next words. “I love you, Simon. I always will.”

  “How will we get more drugs?” Sean asked the moment that Thad closed the front door.

  If I was torn between chasing after Thad and doing drugs with Sean, the conflict was short lived—I chose to get high. “Let’s go see what’s in the basement,” I said, “then we’ll head to the East End.”

  Sean followed me downstairs through the strangely deserted house. I was shocked to see my furniture. Derek must have helped Thad haul the stuff in through the storm doors.

  “Weird,” Sean said, plopping onto the futon couch. “Like day-jaw-view, or whatever the hell.”

  “Déjà vu,” I laughed.

  The furniture was arranged something like it had been in Silverlake. I opened one of the boxes stacked along the wall and found several of the video recorders I used for copying promotional tapes.

  “This equipment should get us something,” I said. “Let’s find a pawnshop.”

  “Will we be coming back to that house?” Sean asked as we drove toward Little Rock. “It’s old and creepy. I don’t like it.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe we’ll go on to New York,” I said.

  What Sean really wanted to know, of course, was whether I planned to dump him for Thad.

  We stopped at a pawnshop near the Highland Court projects where I had met Snake. The name, Big Dude’s, was blazoned in neon lights across the facade. Situated so near the drug zone, I figured they would be accustomed to seeing motley characters like Sean and me. Big Dude, the owner, wore a seventies afro with blue-jean overalls and a red vest. First off, the man called in the serial numbers to see if they were stolen. Satisfied they were clean, he checked the quality, taking off the covers to examine the heads for wear. The video recorders were professional models. Each would be worth several hundred dollars, retail.

  “Two hundred,” Big Dude offered. “But I can only take four machines.”

  I was in no frame of mind to haggle. The amount seemed reasonable. I’d sell some of the furniture later on and redeem the equipment. That is, if none of my business prospects came through. I’d not asked Thad if he had news from any of my clients. Thad’s proclamation of love, and Sean’s sudden appearance in the hallway, had gotten me completely flustered. I probably would not have had the wherewithal to ask, anyway.

  Sean turned pale when I drove into Highland Court. “What are you doing?” he said. “Let’s go to BT’s.”

  “I want drugs now,” I said. “Someone around here’s bound to have a twenty-dollar piece.”

 
; “Yeah, and a gun in their pocket.”

  Dusk had fallen. The buildings cast long shadows, providing cover for the drug dealers. But no one would come near the car.

  “They probably think we’re police,” I said.

  “There’s two cop cars behind that building.” Sean said, sitting up and motioning toward an alley.

  When I came over a rise in the road, flashing lights filled the rearview mirror as the cars raced toward me.

  Sean shrieked, “Get the fuck out of here!”

  I hit the accelerator. Now sirens blared in syncopation with the flashing lights.

  “They’re following us,” I said, nervously.

  “Ditch the pipes,” Sean said.

  As we crossed a bridge, I reached under the seat and tossed the pipes into the stream. Only then did I begin to slow down.

  “We haven’t done anything to worry about,” I said, but my thumping heart betrayed the seeming confidence.

  I turned onto a side street just beyond the projects. One police car parked behind me. The other pulled alongside. A voice came over a loudspeaker, “Turn off the engine and get out of the car.”

  Sean and I stood on opposite sides of the car. The voice said to put our hands on the hood of the car. We obeyed. One of the cops took my wallet.

  “What are you stopping us for?” I asked.

  “Shut up,” the officer said.

  One of the policemen took the keys from the ignition and opened the trunk. “Looks like these two stole some video equipment,” he said to his compatriots.

  “They’re mine,” I protested. “I hocked some at Big Dude’s pawnshop. He didn’t want them all. Look in my shirt pocket. There’s a receipt. The fat guy at the store ran a check on everything. Come on, call Big Dude’s. They’ll confirm it.”

  The policeman closed the trunk, took the receipt out of my pocket, and went to his car. A few minutes later, he returned. “Looks like Old Grissom at Big Dude’s checked out the machines. None of ’em stolen.” The man gave me a stern look. “But I know you fellows are up to something. Stay in position while I run a check on your license plate.”

  I probably seemed like a fool who’d accidentally driven into a dangerous housing project. I was sure the ordeal would be over soon and that Sean and I would be on our way to BT’s.

  Suddenly, the policemen got out of their cars with pistols drawn.

  “What now?” I asked.

  One of policemen forced me to the ground.

  “Mr. Powell, you are under arrest for grand theft auto,” the office said. Then he recited the Miranda warning.

  “This is my car. It’s on loan from the dealership.”

  “This isn’t the stolen vehicle,” the officer said. “You stole a van.”

  I tried to piece together what must have happened. Those Memphis people did it, I started to say, but figured I better keep my mouth shut.

  One of the policemen called for a tow truck.

  “Let my friend take the car,” I said.

  “It would save us some paperwork,” one of the policemen acknowledged.

  “Fine. Let him take it,” the other replied.

  “Take it to Dean’s,” I told an ashen-faced Sean. “Tell him I’m in jail.”

  The officers shoved me into a patrol car. As we drove away, I could see Sean sitting behind the wheel seat. I wasn’t even sure he knew how to drive.

  CHAPTER 44

  During the summer that I turned seventeen, I was at the apartment of a co-worker from my job at Burger Chef. He was a little older than me, probably in his early twenties. We weren’t friends, exactly, but on occasion he had invited me to drop by his place to smoke pot. He assumed I was cool because of my long hair and the fact that he saw me reading The Greening of America during breaks.

  I took him up on the offer and went by one evening after dropping off a date at her house. The girl had wanted to kiss me, and I just couldn’t do it. I was in love with a guy and had only gone on the date as cover. The girl’s disappointment and the knowledge of my own hypocrisy made me want to escape myself.

  At my co-worker’s apartment, five people were sitting in a circle on the floor. Incense perfumed the air as sitar music drifted from the stereo. The group stood up, nervously, when I came into the room. Two of them had just robbed a drugstore. On the coffee table in the middle of the circle were dozens of red, yellow, and black pills arranged in piles on a handkerchief.

  “The guy’s okay,” my co-worker vouched. “Everyone relax.” The group didn’t look convinced, but they sat back down.

  “Take one,” a skinny fellow told me. I figured he wanted to confirm that I wasn’t a narc by watching me take a pill. “Wha’cha want? Yellow jacket? Black mollies?”

  I said “red” because it was my favorite color. I had no idea what the pill would do to me.

  The skinny fellow placed a couple in my hand. “Better take a couple of jackets with you, ’case you want to wake up later on.”

  Someone handed me a bottle of beer. I washed down two of the reds.

  The next thing I knew, I was being pulled over by a policeman. I didn’t remember going to my car, much less leaving the apartment. When I didn’t respond to the policeman’s commands, he pulled open the driver’s-side door. I collapsed onto the pavement like a scarecrow removed from its scaffolding.

  I regained some composure as I sat in the backseat of the patrol car. I felt in my pocket and found the yellow pills, pretending to cough so I could inconspicuously swallow them. By the time we arrived at the police station, I was alert.

  The desk officer put a rotary phone on the desk and told me I could make one call. I dialed home. When Vivian answered, I told her that I’d been picked up on my way home. She and Lenny would be there right away, she said. Since I was only seventeen, the police allowed me to wait on a bench in the hallway rather than throw me in the drunk tank.

  “What are you on?” a policeman asked me. “Uppers or downers?” Then he laughed, making his multiple chins squeeze out of his shirt. He walked away, running a finger around his collar to tuck in the folds of flesh.

  The mirror opposite my seat showed me what I looked like to the policeman—a hippie with embroidered jeans and a brightly colored sweatshirt with green trim around the sleeves and a strawberry printed on the front.

  By the time Vivian and Lenny came marching down the hallway, I was stone sober.

  “Why is my son here?” Lenny demanded of the double-chinned policeman.

  “We done pulled him over,” the man said, “else he would’ve killed someone weaving all over the road like he was.” When he finished speaking, the man rolled his tongue around the inside of his cheeks and then picked up a Styrofoam cup to spit out tobacco juice.

  “It was my contact lenses,” I said quietly as a private message for Lenny and Vivian. “My eyes were hurting.”

  “Did you do a breath test?” Lenny asked. “My son don’t drink.”

  “We will if you want,” the cop said. He ordered one of his subordinates to administer the test.

  I passed with flying colors; the one beer didn’t even register.

  The desk sergeant reached in a drawer and found a syringe. “We found this in the backseat of the patrol car that brought in your son,” he said to Lenny.

  “Get that out of my face,” I said as the policemen waved it at me.

  “My boy don’t do nothing like that,” Lenny protested.

  The fat policeman grabbed my arm and pulled it taut so he could see the fold at my elbow. He was sure there would be track marks.

  “You see? My boy ain’t done nothing!” Lenny said, madder than I’d ever seen him. “I want to speak to the captain.”

  The double-chinned policeman and his cohorts decided to let me go. They apologized to Lenny, but when they looked at me, I could hear their thoughts: Your day will come.

  Now, twenty years later, I found myself in the same dingy hallway, sitting on the same uncomfortable bench.

  “Why am I here?
I haven’t done anything,” I said to the booking clerk. “What’s this about a rental car?”

  “You’ll find out at the arraignment,” the man said without sympathy or emotion.

  The Little Rock jail was notorious for being overcrowded. It was equally well known for its dangers. The evening news often carried reports of inmates being stabbed in their cells. I thought about that as the guard led me down a dimly lit corridor and thrust me into a cage with at least twenty other men. When the door slid shut, I held onto the bars, afraid to look around for fear of making eye contact.

  “Look at that tight ass,” someone said.

  “Give me a piece of that action!” another hooted.

  “Aw, leave him alone,” said an older voice. “Probably got a disease to be that skinny.”

  A high-pitched call came from the back of the cell. “Hey, Holmes. We got rock back here. You want some?” And when I didn’t turn around, “Hey crackhead! We’re talking to you.”

  I wanted a blast so desperately that I almost believed them. I stayed at the cell door and kept my eye on the guard leisurely strolling up and down the hallway.

  “Hey, homeboy,” called out a muscular black fellow with hair done up in pigtails. He grabbed my shoulder, leaned close, and said, “You suck dick?”

  Sweat poured from my hairline. If I said yes, I’d be beaten up as a queer. If I said no, they’d condemn me as worthless and beat me up anyway.

  The pigtailed fellow, shirtless, and wearing loose blue jeans that fell just below the band of his under shorts, pushed me against the wall. “Well?”

  “Sometimes,” I said faintly, my heart rising to my throat.

  “Follow me,” the dude said. He must have had seniority. Everyone else scurried onto their bunks as we passed. A few murmured to themselves, but the catcalls stopped.

  Only a few inmates were as skinny as me. Many were obese. Everyone stank of body odor. A shower stood in one corner, but it had no curtain and didn’t appear to have been used recently. The toilet, a stainless-steel seat jutting from the floor, was in constant use, adding to the rank odors that made it hard to breath.