Pipe Dream

by Solomon Jones

  “Well, they could never say that because they know I didn’t.”

  “They probably know me and Leroy ain’t do it, either. You think that’s gon’ stop them from puttin’ it on us? Matter fact, what’s stoppin’ them from sayin’ you had somethin’ to do with it? First thing they probably say, ‘Yeah, well, you know we’re going to have to charge you as an accomplice, Miss Williams.’ They’ll probably have you down there signin’ all kind o’ stuff.”

  “No they won’t.”

  “Yeah right,” Pookie said, speaking from the corner as she continued to rock back and forth. “What makes you so much better than everybody else?”

  “What?” Clarisse said. “I know you’re not talking—”

  “You don’t know shit,” Pookie said. “You ain’t gon’ sit there and tell me that if they gave you the choice between going to jail for life and snitchin’, you would be like, ‘Oh no, I could never tell on someone. It’s unethical.’ ”

  Black laughed at Pookie’s imitation of Clarisse.

  “That’s her problem,” Pookie said. “She think she the only one ever had somethin’. Lookin’ at us like we ain’t nothin’. You know what I was before I started smokin’? I was a management trainee at Bell. Not sayin’ that’s a whole lot, but it’s better than this.”

  “Look, Pookie,” Black said. “Wasn’t nobody even talkin’ to you.”

  “So what?” she said, standing up and coming over by the window to stand beside him. “You another one, Black. Swear you so smart. Swear you know everything. Well, if you know so much, why we ain’t gone yet? Why you standin’ there lookin’ out the window when you know they could come runnin’ up in here any minute and knock all of us off?”

  “Leroy, come get your woman,” Black said, turning his back on Pookie so she couldn’t see the truth of her words reflected on his face.

  “Leroy can’t do nothin’ to me! He ain’t my man. If he was my man, if he was a man at all, if he cared anything about me or hisself, we wouldn’t be sittin’ here waitin’ for you to figure a way outta this. If Leroy could take the time to be a man, maybe try to get hisself together for a minute, he could get all this.”

  She swept her hand up and down her body in case they couldn’t see clearly enough what Leroy could get.

  “Hold up,” Leroy said. “I could get all what? What I want with you? You everybody woman.”

  “Now, that’s where you wrong,” she said. “How many men you seen me do somethin’ with since I been out here?”

  Leroy opened his mouth to speak, but he was too slow.

  “Let me give you the answer to that ’fore you blow up the damn room tryin’ to think. None. Zero. I don’t do nothin’ out here, but you too stupid to see that. The only one that has ever done more than touch me in the last year and a half I been out here is you, Leroy. You know why? ’Cause I thought I could feel somethin’ for a ninety-nine-cent rice-and-gravy-eatin’ nigger like you. But I guess I was wrong again.”

  “Keep talkin’, you gon’ be a whole lot more than wrong,” Leroy said.

  “Man, that don’t move me,” Pookie said. “You can’t do nothin’ to me I ain’t already do to myself. I lost everything it is to lose ’fore I even got out here like this. So if I lose some blood, if I lose a couple of teeth, if I lose my life out here, it don’t even matter.”

  “Pookie,” Black said, “why don’t you sit down?”

  By then it was too late to stop her. She ignored Black, ignored Leroy, and focused her venom on Clarisse, who had stopped scraping her straight shooter and was looking at Pookie as if she were an evangelist preaching the gospel.

  “I had a house,” she said, looking at Clarisse with contempt. “Right up there in Mount Airy. Four bedrooms, two bathrooms, wall-to-wall carpet. Shit was nice. I had a car. I had a boyfriend. I had all that. I had clothes and jewelry and a bank account. I had a family.”

  Pookie’s tough exterior crumbled slightly as she paused to swipe at her eyes.

  “I had a life!” she said, raising her voice to a high-pitched, broken squeal.

  They were all caught up in the passion of her words, reflecting on what they meant to each of them. Pookie swiped at her eyes again. And when she realized that there were no tears, she looked at her fingers in wonderment, then went on as if she had never stopped.

  “That wasn’t enough, though. I had to have more than everybody else. My man wasn’t the richest guy in the world. But he gave me everything he could with what he had. He gave me jewelry every now and then, paid the bills. We was even savin’ up to buy another house.

  “But I knew I could get a whole lot more than that if I played a little bit, so that’s what I did. And it was cool for a while. You know, I’d go meet my little boyfriends, get what I could get from ’em, and come on home. It wasn’t about fallin’ in love or nothin’. It was strictly about gettin’ mine. It wasn’t about what I wasn’t gettin’ from my man, either, ’cause like I said, he was givin’ me everything I needed.

  “But after a while it was like, I ain’t want to come home no more, ’cause I couldn’t stand lookin’ in his face knowin’ what I was doin’. I guess I thought he might o’ knew or whatever. When I think about it now, though, I know he didn’t know. ’Cause the more I would stay out late, the more I told him, ‘Not tonight,’ the more I pulled away from him, the harder he tried. He loved me like that, but I ain’t care.

  “It was like, I was gettin’ the clothes and the jewelry and the money—all the things I said I wanted—and I was still feelin’ like shit. That ain’t stop me, though. I kept duckin’ and I kept dodgin’. I kept slippin’ and I kept dippin’. And if you asked me now what I was lookin’ for when I was doin’ all that, I couldn’t even tell you.”

  They all looked at Pookie, then at one another, comparing her story to their own. Black stood by the window and wondered how long it had been since she had talked. And he wondered even more how long it had been since anyone had listened.

  He wanted to say something to console her. He wanted to tell her that he knew what she was going through, because he was going through it himself. But by the time he fixed his lips to say something, Pookie began to speak again.

  “So one day this guy beeps me,” she said, her hands moving to the rhythm of her words. “Old nigger with plenty cash. I’m talkin’ ’bout this nigger was paid, you hear me?”

  She stopped long enough to allow them to imagine how paid he was.

  “He beeped me, and I had to call him up a couple o’ times before I caught up with him. When I finally got him, he asked me to meet him at this jazz club downtown. Not that I expected him to say anything different, ’cause that’s all he used to want to do—just be seen with me at the jazz shows.

  “ ‘Just smile and look pretty, baby.’ That’s what he used to tell me—‘just smile and look pretty.’ So that’s what I did. I smiled and hung on his arm like his old ugly-ass was Denzel or somebody. I just figured it wasn’t no thing, you know. Nigger was givin’ up five hundred dollars just to take me to a show, so I was smilin’ my ass off. Wasn’t like we was screwin’, right?”

  They didn’t respond, knowing that it was futile to offer an opinion. She waited half a second, in case one of them tried to challenge her, and then she went on.

  “Well, on this particular night, somethin’ just ain’t feel right,” Pookie said. “It was like somethin’ was out of place, like somethin’ was gettin’ ready to happen. But the longer the show went on, the more I felt like I was bein’ silly to think that.

  “The music was corny, as usual. The drinks was watered down, as usual. The waitress rolled her eyes at me all night long, as usual. And the owner of the club tried to crack on me when I went to the bathroom, as usual.

  “At the end of the night, when he pulled up at the corner of my block, dude handed me an envelope like he always did, and I put it in my pocketbook, like I always did, and kissed him on the cheek. But when I got ready to get out of the car, he said he had forgot to give me s
omethin’.”

  Pookie smiled when she said that.

  “Now ya know I wasn’t goin’ nowhere when he said that, right?” she said, smiling even harder. “ ’Cause Trish wasn’t leavin’ nothin’ behind that was free, you know what I’m sayin’?”

  “Trish?” Leroy said, making it sound like an alien word. “Who Trish?”

  “Who you think?” Pookie said. “My name ain’t no damn Pookie. I made that up so I ain’t have to tell nobody out here my real name. But that’s messed up now, too, ain’t it? Y’all got my name on the radio like it’s number three on the countdown.

  “Patricia Oaks! Patricia Oaks! They mess around and throw a beat behind it and have niggers dancin’ to it.”

  “Ain’t nobody get your name on the radio but you,” Black said. “ ’Cause if you wouldn’t o’ never got the man shot in the first place, none o’ this wouldn’t be happenin’.”

  “Whatever,” Pookie said. “I ain’t even gon’ argue with you.”

  Pookie went back to the corner, put her head between her knees, folded her arms around her legs, and began to rock again. Black looked out the window and began to think of where they would go and how they would get there, wondering but not really caring what the end of Pookie’s story would have been if she had finished it.

  It wasn’t like he needed to hear the end anyway. He already knew the story’s end, because he knew his own. And knowing his own tragedy was enough. He didn’t want to have to listen to it, too. He didn’t want to hear much of anything. All he wanted to hear was that everything they had gone through was nothing more than a pipe dream: something that would go away in a few minutes, like the ghostly puffs of crack smoke that shrouded their broken lives in tattered cloaks of fantasy.

  It wasn’t that easy, though. Because the more Black tried to push Pookie’s story to the back of his mind, the more it tried to push itself to the surface. It was like someone who was fighting to keep from drowning. It would go down, then suddenly bound back to the surface, hands flailing wildly against the water.

  After all, Black was just like Pookie. But he hadn’t sold his smile, or his beauty. No, he had sold something far more valuable than that—his future. And he had sold it for far less than the five hundred dollars she got for a night of cloying smiles and watered-down liquor. He had sold it for a hit.

  But they’d all sold their futures, Black thought. Weren’t they selling themselves even now, giving up their lives in exchange for a high that wasn’t legal tender anywhere except their minds? Or had they been sold, shipped across the airwaves like their ancestors had been shipped across the ocean; sold to the highest bidder like Kunta Kinte; sold to a judicial system eager to gorge itself on their misery . . .

  “Patricia,” Clarisse said, snatching Black’s mind from its free fall.

  Pookie stopped rocking and raised her head from her knees.

  “Is that where you got your first hit?” Clarisse asked timidly.

  “What?” Pookie said, sounding irritated.

  “The old man,” Clarisse said. “Is that who turned you out?”

  Pookie laughed. It was a hearty sound that Black had never heard her make before.

  “Giiirrrrl,” Pookie said between fits of laughter, “you been watchin’ too many Mod Squad reruns, ’cause I swear to God, I ain’t heard nobody say ‘turned out’ since like 1975.”

  They all joined in her laughter. Even Clarisse began to chuckle, falling down on the bed and allowing herself the first good laugh she’d had since she’d let them into her home the night before. For a full minute, they shared a piece of humanity that was never present when crack was involved. For that minute, they weren’t pipers. They were just regular people, relaxing and enjoying one of those laughs that lift the weight of the world from one’s shoulders.

  Pookie was the first to stop laughing. She sat there in the corner, with her arms wrapped around her legs, and looked at Clarisse. While the last vestiges of laughter seeped slowly from the room, Pookie’s look became a stare, as if for the first time she could see the resemblance between the two of them. Somewhere down deep, they were sisters.

  They had come from the same mold and traveled many of the same paths. They had lived many of the same experiences and seen many of the same things. They had both fallen somewhere along the way, and they had both ended up in the same trap. Now, amid the strains of laughter that enveloped the room, they both tried to fight through the haze that was their lives to come to an understanding of it all. By the time the laughter stopped, Pookie was ready to begin.

  “Why you ask me that?” she said to Clarisse.

  Clarisse, who had just stopped laughing, was momentarily confused.

  “Why did I ask you what?” she said, then suddenly remembered the reason she had started laughing in the first place. “Oh, you mean why did I ask you that. I was just curious.”

  “You was more than curious,” Pookie said. “You knew. I mean, it ain’t like you was wrong or nothin’, but if you know all that before I even tell you, you must know it from experience.”

  “That’s why y’all keep tryin’ to kill each other,” Black said. “Y’all just alike.”

  Nobody bothered to offer a conflicting opinion.

  “So are you going to answer the question or not?” Clarisse said.

  “What question?” Pookie said, teasing.

  “What happened when the guy told you he’d forgotten to give you something?”

  Pookie stood up and walked across the room to where Clarisse sat on the bed. She sat down beside her. And then, with a deep sigh, she continued her story.

  “It ain’t like it’s a whole lot to tell,” Pookie said. “He played me. After he told me he forgot to give me something, I closed the car door and we rode to his house. I’d say he lived about ten blocks from us, in one of those big mansions up there on Stenton Avenue, so it only took like two minutes to get there. But in those two minutes, I musta asked him at least ten times what he had for me. You know how little kids act when you get something for ’em and you won’t tell ’em what it is? Well, that’s how I was.”

  Pookie shook her head, thinking of how gullible she’d been. Then she slapped her hands against her thighs and continued.

  “So when we got to his house, he hit a remote control and these big black gates opened. Now, I’m sittin’ there like, drugged, ’cause I ain’t never seen this before, right? But I’m tryin’ to play it off like I’m used to bein’ in big mansions with big black gates and driveways that’s a block long. And he just drivin’ along, actin’ like he don’t notice me over there lookin’ happier than a faggot in Boys Town. But every time I think about it, I know that he knew right then that he had me.

  “I can’t imagine how I musta looked, just sittin’ there, lookin’ stupid, wonderin’ what was on the other side of those big oak doors with the brass handles that I saw comin’ up at the end of the driveway. I guess y’all can probably imagine how I musta looked, too.”

  Black couldn’t imagine how Pookie must have looked. And he couldn’t imagine her being stupid about anything, either. He guessed that she must have been a different person before. Maybe she had the luxury of being able to show her feelings, or the luxury of being able to make stupid mistakes. But the streets had taken that away from her. They had taken that away from all of them. Because showing your feelings or making mistakes in the streets can be fatal. And with so many other lethal things in such close proximity, feelings and mistakes become unattainable luxuries.

  They all knew that, and Pookie did, too. But she needed to finish, to purge herself. The rest of them needed to listen. So when she started talking again, Black turned from the window, looked in her face, and did just that.

  “When we got in his house,” Pookie said hesitantly, as if she were struggling to remember the details, “we walked through this big hallway. I guess you would call it a foyer, ’cause it was way too big to be a vestibule. He told me to sit down while he went upstairs to get my gift. So I’m s
ittin’ there, chillin’, and he hollers downstairs and tells this guy to bring me some cognac, right? It ain’t click till like the next day that dude was the butler, but that’s a whole ’nother story.

  “So anyway, I take the cognac. I’m sittin’ there sippin’, tryin’ not to just scream out loud ’bout how phat dude’s crib is, right? Then he came downstairs and asked me to come in the next room.

  “When I went in there, I almost fell out. Dude had a Jacuzzi in the middle of the floor, six-foot speakers in every corner of the room, a bar on one wall, and a fish tank, no, not a fish tank—an aquarium that ran around the other three walls of the room. He told me to sit down. But I think I was too busy tryin’ to drag my bottom lip off the carpet. It was like somethin’ on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.

  “Well, it took me a minute, but when I finally got myself together to the point where I could sit down, dude reached behind one of the speakers and pulled out this little box and handed it to me. So I looked at it, and it was too big to be a ring, and too small to be a necklace. He told me to open it. But I was so nervous, thinkin’ it was gon’ be one o’ them big diamonds with a platinum chain attached to it, I couldn’t even get my hands to work together long enough to take the ribbon off.

  “He saw what I was goin’ through, so he laughed a little bit, then he took the box and opened it for me. When I looked inside, it was a gold key on a gold link chain. He took it out the box, put it around my neck, and pointed to a cabinet over by the bar. When I walked over to the cabinet, I noticed it had a big lock in the middle of it. I looked over at him, and he pointed to the key around my neck. When I opened it . . .”

  Pookie stopped and reminisced for a moment, thinking about what she saw in the cabinet.

  “When I opened it,” she said, quieting her voice to dramatize the moment, “it was a coke rock in there that was so big, it scared me. I looked at dude like: What is this? He just smiled and came over to the cabinet. He took out two pipes, two little blowtorches, broke off a piece of the rock, and lit it up.

  “I swear to God, y’all. Soon as I seen him light that pipe, I was ready to leave. Somethin’ in my mind kept tellin’ me to go get my little pocketbook and walk out the front door. But the more I tried to walk away, the more my body wouldn’t let me move. It had me curious, man.