Boulevard

by Jim Grimsley

  Henry can slip a coin into a slot so easily, dropping it neatly so the coin never touches the sides, the clean click of the coin engaging the electrical connection, the fluttering image reappearing, Henry’s precise, neat fingers reaching to adjust the focus, smiling at his neighbor in the booth, who has already unzipped his trousers. Another amazing performance, keeping the man and his apparatus engaged at the proper velocity all the while watching poor Chuck Connors abuse himself and wondering, again, if it really was the actor, poor fellow, but nicely hung, and readying another quarter to drop at the proper moment when the projector sputtered and stopped, at moments like these Henry knew himself to be a fully engaged human being.

  Lafayette hung around in the bookstore now that it was busy. He liked to be near the register, to jive at the counter while Newell kept the music going, listening to Newell rag Mr. Mac, trying to convince the old man to buy some decent disco lights and maybe a mirror ball for the store, to make the place more festive, Newell said, a word the kid had started using lately. Lafayette made a rumble of a deep laugh in his throat and cut his eyes at Newell. A thing had been on Lafayette’s mind, lately, nothing to put in words, but a willingness, if anything were ever to start itself, after work, for instance, if Newell were ever to approach him, say Newell needed something like a woman sometimes did, and he approached Lafayette. There were times when, thinking about it, wondering, looking at the sinuous way Newell moved to the music behind the cash register, moving those hips those thighs those lips. Sometimes Lafayette wanted to reach his fingers through that dog collar and pull a bit, grab Newell that way and let him know, but that would be the wrong way, as if Lafayette were the one who was wanting something, and he was certainly not, but on the other hand if some evening after the store closed Newell were to approach him, to touch him on the biceps, say, if Newell were to touch him there.

  Not that he needed, not that he wanted … There were plenty of women to be had, there was no need for a man to reach, to ask, to lower himself, but on the other hand if the opportunity presented itself, if it should happen, what would be the harm in saying yes? Lafayette would be a part of it, yes, but not really, because he was only doing what he would have done with a woman anyway, receiving this lovely dust of pleasure over himself, he could picture it that way, and so the bookstore for a while became interesting to Lafayette, and Lafayette became interesting to the people in the bookstore.

  Mac was sitting at his desk late that evening, stacks of rolled quarters everywhere, piled on the desk, on top of the filing cabinet, on the shelf next to the Mr. Coffee machine, stacked up on his extra shoes. He was going to have to buy a fucking safe on top of everything else and where the fuck to put it. Maybe hire Leon to build him a room in the back, a good stout room, and build a safe in it. Why fucking not? if he was going to have to keep so fucking much cash on hand. Jesus Christ, these faggots bought turns in the quarter movies like it was nothing. Lately he had to empty the machines in the middle of the day, stuffed with change already, and him just finished rolling up the goddamn quarters from the night before. Simpler to keep rolling the goddamn things himself than to hike back and forth from the fucking bank. The new booths had been open nine days, and the movie business was bigger every day, nearly double what it had been before. Now Newell had room to keep a good movie as long as he liked, and in fact he was having trouble keeping stocked. Mac supplied his store from a wholesale house in Algiers, a very quiet operation, and one to which Mac had been reluctant to introduce Newell; he would have to keep an eye on the kid for a while longer before taking a step like that. Maybe one of these days he would drive Newell to the warehouse with him, take a look at the whole range of available merchandise, most of the stock having come down from Chicago, novelties and fuck magazines and fuck movies, one-hand bullshit he liked to call it, his stock in trade, part of it, along with Dixie and the world upstairs.

  Tonight the Owner was having a party upstairs, being a person whose name is best left out of this, for the good of all parties involved. The Owner was upstairs, maybe with Dixie in the parlor, or maybe he had already gone into one of the rooms off the gallery with his nephew Jack and a couple of the girls. The building always felt so much smaller when the Owner was in it, and tonight he planned to be here all evening, though if Mac was lucky he could avoid the ugly old son of a bitch, face that looked like a fucking skull with fucking skin stretched over it, lips like pieces of sausage, what a miserable ugly old motherfucker he was but with more money than the pope. Too much goddamn time to think, counting out these fucking quarters. He shook a cigarette out of its pack, lighting, puffing, and heading to the office door to stand in it, looking across at Newell. “There has fucking got to be a better way.”

  “What?”

  “I have counted motherfucking quarters till my thumbs hurt.”

  “I bet you Schwegmann sells a machine.”

  Mac nodded, face veiled. Why was he thinking of that bastard anyway? Son of a bitch never came around here, sent his accountant sometimes but more often these days Mac had to fucking deal with the goddamn bookkeeping, too, had to go upstairs once a week and sit with Dixie and make her run a fucking tape on the goddamn adding machine, and the tired cunt half the time counted some fucking number twice or forgot to write through a no-show in the book, some such shit as that. “Fucking Schwegmann’s.”

  “You drop the quarters and they fall in this funnel into this tube with the wrapper on it.”

  “I didn’t know there was any such goddamn machine. Why didn’t you fucking tell me? Me sitting here counting these goddamn things half the fucking night.”

  “I can’t stand here talking, I have customers, Mac.”

  “Let fucking Maurice take the customers.”

  “His name is Lawrence.”

  “He looks like a freak. Where did he get a ring in his nose?”

  “People like it. People are already talking about it. He’s from Philadelphia.”

  “Fuck Philadelphia. Tell him to get that nasty thing out of his nose. It ain’t sanitary.” None of this was loud enough for Lawrence to hear, lost in the disco. Mac was grinning and Newell was grinning.

  “We making a lot of money?” Newell asked.

  Mac looked at him. “We’re doing all right.”

  “You want Lawrence to do the quarters? I can run the cash register.”

  “Fuck no. The little son of a bitch is probably a thief.”

  “His pants are too tight to hide a whole lot of change,” Newell noted, and Mac snorted cigarette smoke.

  “They get any tighter they’ll crush his balls.”

  “Let me know if you want any help,” Newell said, wandering back to the second register, a fucking second cash register, would you fucking look at it. Mac puffed up big at the sight, brand new since two days ago, for times like this when the line was too long for one person. Mac listened to the drawer-bell ring every time the register completed a sale and opened the magic money drawer. Mac could see it in his mind, he no longer needed to be standing over it. Sweet cash and coin. Everything on the rise. Because with the movies doing a booming business, there were people in the store nearly all the time now, and with that kind of cruising going on, there were a lot of people buying magazines and novelties, rubbers with ticklers on them, cock rings, he puffed his cigarette, thinking about the stacks of money in the office, and he closed the door behind him, locking it.

  Mac wandered through the back, behind the thin wall that was this side of the new movie booths; beyond he could hear the occasional muffled sound, and he wondered what these filthy motherfuckers would think if they knew he was only the thickness of a piece of sheetrock away from them, just on the other side doing some horrible strange kind of shit to one another, and him right here puffing away on a Camel. There was plenty of room back here. He could get Leon to build him a room. Buy a safe and build it into the walls. He wouldn’t need to get the fucking city’s permission, either, just pay Leon in cash and tell him to work at night and kee
p his mouth shut.

  In the courtyard he felt a pain in his side and figured it was his liver; he guessed it was turning into a rock. A petrifying tree. One cell at a time, the liver tissue replaced by sharp painful bits of stone. He figured it would kill him before the smoking would, so he lit another cigarette and blew smoke into the leaves of the plantain tree.

  He was eating a lot of benzedrine and drinking to take the edge off it. Black beauties, what the bikers liked to call them. Bought them buy the thousand, sold them to the girls upstairs, to some of the johns, and to the Owner’s nephew Jack, a sordid motherfucker, a sick piece of shit, according to the girls. Mac was grinding his jaw. His nose ached from the line of cocaine he had done before leaving the office; he sold that, too, though it was harder to get in the quantity he wanted. These were businesses he conducted in the back cabinet upstairs, his little office, by appointment. The house was safe; the Owner paid for the right kind of protection. Safe as your sister’s pussy, Mac liked to say.

  Lafayette’s friends were hanging out in the courtyard, that one named Milford, sitting at the table playing cards with some buddy of his. Mac gave up trying to remember all the names. Lucky to remember Milford, who was one fat dark motherfucker with forearms the size of hams. Mac wandered that way but not too close, enjoying the balmy night.

  The loggia of the old house had been closed in long ago; a narrow door led to stairs to the gallery on the next level. Somebody came out the door, Dixie, stepping into the floodlight where Mac was standing; she had dyed her hair red again, that bright red with a hint of pink that gave an odd air of dissociation to her face, lined and creased with age, but her hair fluffed and groomed to perfection. She could have been a country-western star in the right outfit, but she was wearing a low-cut dress showing a moist ravine of cleavage. She was wobbling some in the high heels, either from the scotch or the pills or the combination. Her green eyes were surrounded by creases and folds of flesh; it made him sad to see her looking old like this; she had been such a pretty thing. “Mac,” she said, her dusky voice raking his arm along with her manicured nails, “come upstairs. Jack wants to see you in your room.”

  “He knows I’m here?”

  Dixie shrugged.

  “All right,” he said, shuffling toward the storeroom again. “Let me tell Newell where I am, I’ll be up in a minute.”

  “He ain’t going to want to wait.”

  “I ain’t planning to make him wait, Dixie.”

  She blew out a long breath, touched the tips of her nails to the outer halo of her hair. “I hate it when these bastards come, anymore.”

  “You and me both.”

  “You don’t have to lick his ass like I do.”

  “Well, not literally, I don’t.”

  She tossed her head as if that proved her point.

  “Tell Jack I’ll be up.”

  “He’s a sick bastard, too.”

  “Dixie, do you want me to come upstairs or do you want me to stand out here and fucking talk to you all night?”

  “Oh, fuck you, Mac. Tell Newell I said hey.”

  When he left, she was lighting a cigarette, not looking as if she minded keeping Jack waiting a bit.

  A few minutes later Mac puffed up the stairs, tightness in his chest, remembering when he leaped up these steps two or three at a time.

  Jack was waiting for him, slouched in Mac’s chair in a white starched shirt, perfectly pressed, the top button unbuttoned, dark trousers and shoes that shone in the dim light. He had lit a cigarette. Dark beard under his pale skin. Women went crazy for the son of a bitch, whores same as all the rest, till they found out what he was like. At one time or another Jack had bought every kind of drug Mac could find. Dixie’s girls were afraid of him.

  “Hey, Mac.” That easy voice. “You look like you’re working hard tonight.”

  “It’s hot as fuck for October.” Mac mopped his face, cool with sweat.

  “Feels pretty good to me. You’re just getting old. Heart’s about ready to give out.”

  “Well, fuck you, too, Jack.”

  Jack laughed, drew his feet off the desk. He stood aside to let Mac stumble into his chair and put his legs up, the aching lower part of the shin that felt like it wanted to explode, Mac letting out a long breath. “You all right?” Jack asked.

  “Yeah, I’m all right. Those motherfucking stairs. Takes me a minute to get my breath.”

  “You need to get more exercise.”

  “Fuck exercise. The only exercise I want is for Dixie to get one of the girls to suck my cock now and then.”

  They transacted their business cleanly and efficiently. Black beauties, a half-gram cocaine, a half-pound of good pot. Jack wanted more acid and Mac had part of a sheet left and sold him thirty tabs. “There won’t be no more of that for a while.”

  “No?”

  Mac shook his head. “Can’t get it. Can’t find the motherfucker.”

  “Who sold it to you?”

  “Hell’s Angel I know. He does the beauties and he had the acid, too, but he don’t like it and he don’t get it regular.”

  “Oh, Mac,” Jack shaking his head.

  “I don’t like the shit myself. Makes the world puke purple to me.”

  “Give me the rest of what you have.”

  “Naw, I got to save some for Dixie, now.”

  “Give me as much as you can.”

  The acid was in a freezer in the pantry of the main house, padlocked. Mac unlocked it. Unrolled the tabs of red roosters under the dim light and cut off the twenty tabs he needed to save for Dixie. Jack counted out his cash. “How come I don’t get a discount?”

  “You don’t need a discount.”

  “I’m a poor son of a bitch, Mac.”

  “Who never spends his own money.” Mac laughed, shook his head. “I don’t know why I even talk to you.”

  “You like me.” Jack stretched, rotated an arm taking the shoulder through its whole range of motion, like an athlete checking himself, like a cat. A grin spread under his broken nose. He closed the door.

  Mac sat with the lamplight spilling over his spotted hands. His knees in the polyester trousers made a sharp angle, as if there were only bone and no flesh.

  Outside, Jack, instead of climbing the stairs to the attic, where the studio and the women and his uncle were in the midst of their evening, walked downstairs and into the bookstore by the back entrance, something he had done only once before.

  He wanted a glimpse. Tonight the love child was wearing a better collar than before, thick brown leather with a ring of sharp spikes projected outward, a soft T-shirt that clung to his shoulders, his nipples outlined under the shirt. Jack watched Newell and felt in his gut that he would go after this child again very soon. Maybe tonight. Newell, moving unconsciously to the music, smiling and talking, glancing at Jack, once, followed by a moment of recognition when Jack smiled, Jack thinking to himself, Soon, very soon. Newell was watching and his color was rising, a line of rose out of the black collar of the shirt, lovely, the print of a hand in that soft skin, Jack pictured it, the print of a hand drawn sharply across that smooth cheek.

  Somebody spoke to the love child, Jack lingering a second longer to make sure, yes, Newell was still watching, had returned to watching Jack, and this was enough for the moment. Jack ducked out the door into the courtyard again.

  The big hoodlum in the courtyard stopped Jack under the plantain leaves. “Now, sir, you know Mr. Mac don’t like the folk to use that door from back in here.”

  “I just got turned around,” Jack said, raising both hands, heading for the loggia, bounding up the steps.

  Where he saw, in its final stages, the artistry of the incomparable Leonora, in high black boots, black panties, breasts shaking with each lash, whipping a bundle of canes across the flaccid cheeks, the white and crumpled buttocks, the old man, Jack’s uncle, gasping, his little leathery slip of cock straining to crow again as he made a high-pitched, yelping sound and reached for himself. Ghastl
y, his shivering white thighs, the stretched skin puckering over his skull, his forehead, his lips gone slack, drool in the corner of his mouth, old uncle in the height of ecstasy, or nearing the height of it, as Nora wielded the canes and screamed at him. True, her obscenities were not the most original or degrading, but her stroke-work with the canes was masterful, and the old man, to his fierce cloudy-eyed delight got hard as a tenpenny nail for a few moments and came, the end of the evening.

  Lawrence, the new cashier, had seen that handsome man staring at the cash register and figured the stare was for him, nudged Newell, “Look at that one, baby.” Licking a fingertip, running it over his eyebrows. “The hottest man of the night award.”

  “He looks like somebody I know,” Newell said.

  “He’s looking over here like he wants to eat me,” Lawrence said.

  “He is staring,” Newell agreed.

  Dark hair, almost jet black. Eyes the color of coal. A heavy jaw and beard, a face that would have looked homely except that its bolder touches—the heavy eyebrows, the deep olive tone to the skin, the strong nose—made such a masculine ensemble. The kind of a man you saw in the French Quarter no more than once or twice a week. For a few moments Lawrence hardly saw the customer in front of his face, that friend of Newell’s, out of the booths for more change, looking like he had crawled on his hands and knees, his shirt stained, his beltless pants a mess. Booth trash, Lawrence thought, and when he looked again the oh-so-handsome man was gone.

  “Did he go out the back?” Lawrence asked.