Slow Dancing Through Time

by Gardner R. Dozois

  “When we uncrated the things—man, you should’ve been there! We took a hatchet and split them up the crotch, and all this wonderful white powder tumbled out of the stomachs.”

  We shared appreciative laughter. Somewhere in the background, a shill put on the Sgt. Pepper album. Somebody else lit a stick of patchouli incense.

  Sheila chose that moment to send up the steerer. Good timing is what makes a manager, and Sheila was the best. The steerer was a blue jeans and Pink Floyd tee-shirt type. He tapped me on the shoulder, said, “Hey Jerry, I’m cutting out now.”

  “Yeah, well. That’s cool, man.” I threw Stringy a raised eyebrow, a sort of lookit-the-jerks-I-gotta-put-up-with look. Easing him carefully on to my side. Blue Jeans shifted uncomfortably.

  “Uh. You promised to deal me a couple a keys.”

  “Oh. Right.” I called over my shoulder, “Hey, Sheila, honey, bring me the basket, willya?” Then I looked at the steerer as if he were something unpleasant. “That’s sixty gee,” I said doubtfully.

  “Got it right here.” He pulled out a wad of money that was eye-popping if you didn’t know that all the middle bills were ones. I negligently accepted it, and traded it to Sheila for a large Andean wicker hamper she fetched from the dark recesses of the loft.

  If Sheila had no talent at all, I’d still stick her in the background during a play. She stands six-three and weighs about half what you’d swear was humanly possible. She always, even indoors at midnight, wears sunglasses. Creepy. Most people make her out to be a junkie.

  “Thanks, sweet.” I stuck the top of the hamper under my arm. “Count the money and put it somewhere willya?” She riffled through it, said, “Sixty,” in a startlingly deep voice and faded back into obscurity.

  I rummaged through the hamper, came up with two brown bags. Then I weighed them judiciously, one in each hand, and dropped one back in. The other I opened to reveal a zip-lock plastic bag crammed to the gills with white powder.

  “You want a taste?” My voice said he didn’t.

  “Naw, I’m on the air in an hour. No time to get wasted.”

  “Ciao, then.” Meaning: Get lost.

  “Ciao.”

  The steerer left, taking his midnight-doper pallor with him. I was playing Stringy against a roomful of very pale honkies. The only dark face in the joint was his. Which helped put him on the defensive, raised the fear of appearing to be . . . not cool . . . in front of all these white folk.

  At the same time, I was busily snubbing them all, and yet being very warm toward him. Treating him as a fellow sophisticate. Getting him to identify with me. It helps create trust.

  “Hey, I like your basket, man.”

  “Yeah?” My voice was pleased. “I got it in S.A. Be going back there as soon as I unload the last—” I glanced in the basket “—eight keys. If you like, I could mail you a couple.”

  “You do that. How much’d you say they cost?”

  “Empty or full?” We all three laughed at this. “No, seriously, I’d be glad to. No charge.”

  Stringy was pleased. “What can I say? I like your style, too.”

  “Hey, man,” Jimmy interjected. “How about that blow, huh? I got me plans for a very heav-ee date!” Nobody laughed.

  “Sure, sure,” I said distastefully. He scrabbled inside his pockets for his wad. “No hurry,” I said. He thrust it at my face, and I let it fall into my lap.

  “Fifty thousand,” he said. “That’s two keys for me, ‘cause I’m going in with my brother here.”

  Jimmy the Wit can be a very likeable guy. And when Stringy met him, that’s what he was. But once the mark has been roped in, a major part of the roper’s job is transferring the mark’s respect from himself to the insideman. He quietly makes himself unpleasant, and fosters the feeling in the mark that the roper is not really deserving of the great deal that is going down. Not at all a cool person like the insideman. So the mark’s loyalties shift. Then, when the blow-off comes, the moment in which the mark is separated from his money and from the insideman, the mark has no desire whatever to stay in the presence of the roper. There is a clean, quiet parting of the ways.

  I looked down at the money, picked it up, let it drop. “I really shouldn’t be doing this,” I said sadly. “I half-promised a friend that I’d hold out six keys for him.”

  Jimmy the Wit looked stricken. Stringy didn’t say anything, but his face got very still, and there was a hungry look in his eyes.

  Figure it this way: Coke sells for maybe a hundred dollars a gram. At that rate, Stringy’s four keys would be worth four-hundred thousand dollars at what the police call “street prices.” Now, admittedly, Stringy is not going to be selling his coke in four thousand single-gram transactions, so he’s not going to get anywhere near that much for it. Still, I’ve strongly implied that the stuff is at least eighty percent pure. Which means that he can step on it lightly and get another key. Or he can step on it heavy and practically double the weight. Which he was likely to do, since his customers were all inner-city and doubtless had never had pure anything in their lives. There’s profit in the business, never doubt it.

  “Hey, look, man,” Jimmy whined. “You promised.”

  “I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it,” I said, annoyed. “It’s just—” I called over my shoulder, “Hey, Sheila!” She materialized by my side.

  “Yes?” she said in that unsettlingly deep voice.

  “How long do you think it’ll take Deke to come up with the money?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “That long?” I asked.

  “Easily.” She paused, then added, “You know how he is.”

  I sighed, and dismissed her with a wave of my hand. Thought for a moment. “What the hell. I’ll give him a good deal on the next batch.”

  Everyone relaxed. Stringy let out a deep breath, the first real indication he’d given as to how deeply hooked he was. Smiles all around.

  I sorted through the hamper, carefully choosing six bags, and laying them on the coffee table we were seated around. They made an impressive pile.

  I took up a coke mirror from the edge of the table, and wiped it clean against my sleeve. Popping open a bag at random, I spooned out a small mound of lactose. Enough for three generous snorts. Following which, I began chopping it up with a gold-plated razorblade. Ritual is very important in these matters. Stringy and Jimmy the Wit were hanging onto my every move.

  “Hey.” I paused midway through the chopping. “I’ve got an idea.” I put the blade down and reached for a small brass box. “As long as we’re doing this, I want you guys to sample something. It’s kind of special.” I looked at Stringy as I said this, implying that the offer was really—secretly—for him.

  I opened the box and carefully lifted out the Rock.

  Stringy’s eyes grew large and liquid, as I lifted the Rock up before me, holding it as though it were the Eucharist.

  He was staring at a single crystal of cocaine, net weight over one full ounce. It’s an extremely rare and valuable commodity. Not for the price it would bring (two thousand dollars “street prices”), but for the status. I paid dearly for that crystal; a lot more than two thousand. But the effect was worth it. Stringy positively lusted after it. He was hooked.

  Gingerly, delicately, I shaved three more lines from the Rock, and set it back in its box. I resumed chopping, keeping the mound of lactose and the mound of coke carefully separate. “Some jerk offered me twenty thousand for this the other day,” I said. “I told him to go fuck himself. He had no appreciation of the beauty of it. This is pure magic, friends. And you can’t buy magic, you know what I mean?”

  Stringy nodded in a worldly fashion. I finished chopping, and began to lay out the lines with wide sweeps of the razorblade. I’d separate the mounds into three lines each, then merge two and divide them again. I shifted minute quantities back and forth, evening up the amounts. My hand flew gracefully over the mirror, shifting the lines to and fro like a circus grifter shuffling walnut shells
under one of which resides a small green pea. Pretty soon you had to be paying very close attention to know which line came from which mound.

  Sheila’s voice broke in suddenly. “Mind if I borrow the Rock?” I grunted assent without looking up. She faded back into the gloom, taking box and Rock with her. Stringy swiveled to watch it go. He’d have been less than human if he hadn’t.

  I took advantage of his distraction to shift two or three of the lines. After a bit more fussing, I presented the mirror. On it were two groups of three lines each.

  “There,” I said. “This—” I tapped the razorblade next to the first group “—is from the stuff you’re buying. And this—” tapping next to the second group “—is from the Rock. I suggest you try the merchandise first, so that you can judge it without synergistic effects.” Everyone seemed amenable to the notion.

  I looked down at the money Jimmy the Wit had dumped in my lap. “Damn, Jimmy, these are all old bills. Either of you guys got—”

  Stringy pulled out a leather bill-holder from inside his jacket, and suavely slid out a single crisp and spotless thousand-dollar bill from what was obviously a matched set of one hundred. My expression communicated approval, and he happily rolled it into a snorter.

  I held the mirror up to Stringy, and with a gracious smile he did up the first line, half in one nostril and half in the other. Jimmy the Wit was all impatience, and as soon as Stringy had half-shut his eyes and leaned back his head in appreciation, Jimmy snatched the rolled-up bill from his hands. He leaned far forward and did up his line in a single snort. I followed suit. Then all three of us let out small laughs of appreciation.

  “Ve-ry niiiiice!” Stringy said. “In fact—” he handed the leather billfold with its hundred-grand cargo to me with a flourish “—I’d go so far as to say ‘Keep the billfold.’ ”

  “Sheila,” I said quietly. She was there. I handed her Jimmy’s wad and Stringy’s money. She riffled through Jimmy’s first.

  “Fifty,” she said. Then she riffled through Stringy’s money, every bit as quickly, but with a great deal more care.

  “Ninety-nine.” She faded far back. To the kitchen, in fact, where there was a switch to a signal light in the next building.

  “Well,” I said. “That was pleasant.” I was playing with the empty billfold, admiring it absently. “What say we do up the rest?” No argument.

  Of course, Jimmy and I had snorted up lactose while Stringy was inhaling pure Peruvian toot. When I juggled the lines, I laid out the blow in the first, fourth, and sixth places. Which meant that Stringy, being first to sample each group, snorted up powder from the Rock. It also meant that the last line—ostensibly for me—was also real coke. And there’s where I made my one little mistake.

  The play as written was that in handling the mirror, I would bumble and spill the last line all across the rug. What happened was that I got greedy. Coke’ll do that to you.

  I did up the line.

  It was just as the rush was hitting me that Sheila’s signal was answered. There was a vicious pounding on the door, and then a crash as the whole damn thing came splintering off its hinges. Men in blue uniforms, carrying guns, spilled into the room. “Awright, nobody move!” one of them yelled.

  I was riding on a great wave of clean energy when it happened, and it threw off my timing. I lurched forward a split-second late, and then everything happened at once.

  Stringy jumped to his feet, looking wildly for an exit.

  I fell across the coffee table, scattering bags of white powder with gleeful abandon.

  One of the shills screamed. Another shouted, “Let’s get OUTTA here!”

  “Blue Jay Way” was playing in the background.

  Clouds of white rose from the table as zip-lock bags burst open. There was a gunshot.

  Jimmy the Wit grabbed Stringy by the arm and pointed toward a rear window, which led to a fire escape.

  The shills ran about frantically.

  And Sheila turned the lights out, plunging the room into darkness.

  For the next three minutes, we all acted out our parts. Then, when she was certain that Jimmy the Wit had led Stringy safely out of the neighborhood, Sheila turned the lights on again.

  Everyone stopped what they were doing. The “police” holstered their guns. The shills straightened up their clothes. And I swiped at the lactose powder on my knees.

  Then they all lined up to get paid.

  “Good show,” I told Sheila, as we left. “Damned good.”

  “Yeah. Drop you someplace?”

  “Naw. I feel like taking a stroll.”

  When she was gone, I murmured “Damned good” to myself again, and started walking. I was feeling fine. There was a time when they said there were only three Big Cons: the Wire, the Rag, and the Pay-off. The Rock was my own invention, and I was extremely pleased with how well it was working out.

  So I strolled along, whistling, following the path I knew Jimmy the Wit would lead the pimp along. This was the final part of my job, to make sure the button hadn’t come hot, that the roper had gotten away from the mark clean, and without attracting any attention from the police. But it was pure routine, for I knew, deep in my bones, that the button hadn’t come hot. I could feel it.

  So I was stunned when I rounded a corner and saw Jimmy the Wit and Stringy in the arms of the Law. There were five cops around a stricken-looking Jimmy and an extremely pissed Stringy.

  That’s when I realized what a mistake it had been to do up that single, innocuous line of coke. Because Stringy was looking mad because the cops were laughing at him. After all, he was holding a hundred-gee bagful of what they had just spot-analyzed as milk sugar.

  I realized all in a flash that I was in big trouble. A fraction of a second too late in scattering the bags. Stringy had been able to shove one of them under his arm before fleeing. If I’d been on cue, when the cops nabbed him for suspicious running—which is a crime in some of our larger metropoli—we’d have still gotten away clean. He’d have never realized that he’d been burned.

  Even at that, if Jimmy the Wit had been looking my way when I rounded the corner, he’d have managed to distract Stringy while I eased out of sight. But there’s just no arguing with a losing streak. Stringy lashed an indignant finger at me and yelled, “There he is! He’s the burn artist that ripped me off”!”

  I bolted. Behind me, one of the police yelled, “Stop or I’ll shoot!” and there was the sharp sound of a bullet hitting the edge of the building inches to my side. A fragment of brick went flying, and cut an evil gash in my upper arm. The pain struck me with all the force of a fist in the ribs.

  I stumbled and fell to my knees, recovered, stood, and ran.

  The cops ran after me.

  They chased me through the warehouse district and into a cul-de-sac.

  ###

  No place to go—

  The smooth wall of the warehouse loomed up in front of me, and it might just as well have been Mount Everest.

  Dead end, you dumb schmuck, I shrieked silently at myself, dead end! My mind gave up at that point, but my legs had developed a will of their own; they wanted to run, so run they did—I imagined them whirring around in huge blurred circles like the legs of cartoon characters, biting into the dirt, sending me sizzling forward like a rocket. Feets, don’t fail me now!

  I hurtled toward the wall. Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t have stopped in time.

  Behind me, I could hear an ominous double click as one of the cops cocked his gun for another shot.

  Some distanced part of my mind made me put my hands up in front of me at the last moment to absorb some of the impact.

  There was no impact.

  I went right through the wall.

  ###

  There was no impact, but there was sudden darkness. The world disappeared. I think I screamed. For a moment or two all was madness and confusion, and then, without having broken stride, I began to lose momentum, my running steps coming slower and slower, as
through I were in a film that was being shifted into slow motion, as though I were trying to run through molasses. The resistance I was moving against increased, and just at the point where all my forward momentum had been spilled and I was slooooowing to a stop, there was a slight tugging sensation, like a soap bubble popping, light burst upon me, and I could see again.

  I was standing in a room.

  Someone’s living room, it looked like—an antiquarian’s perhaps, a man of quiet tastes and substantial means. There was a Bokhara carpet in scarlet and brown. A large, glassed-in bookcase filled with thick and dusty leather-bound volumes. A browning world-globe on a gleaming brass stand. A highboy with decanters and cut-glass goblets arranged on it. In the middle of everything, about ten feet away from me, was a massive mahogany desk, obviously an antique, with charts carelessly scattered across it and, behind the desk, a tall-backed overstuffed chair—of the type you see in movies that take place in British clubs—with someone sitting in it.

  The walls and ceiling of the room were featureless and gray, although it was hard to tell what they were made of—they seemed oily somehow, as if there was a faint film over them that would occasionally, almost subliminally, shimmer. There were no doors or windows that I could see. The quickest of head-turns told me that another blank wall was only a step or two behind me. There was no sign of, or sound from, the police, who should also have been only a step or two behind me.

  I thought my disorientation was complete until I took a closer look at the man in the chair and saw that it was Stringy.

  “Jerry, my man!” Stringy said jovially. “You have been a baaad boy.”

  He smiled at me over a brandy snifter half-filled with some amber-colored fluid.

  For the first time in my life, I was at a loss for words.

  I opened my mouth, closed it again, like a fish breathing water. My thoughts scurried in a dozen different directions at once. The first thought was that I was dead or in a coma—one of those goddamn cops had shot me, blown me away, and somewhere back there—wherever “there” was; wherever here was—I was lying dead or dying in the street, crazed thoughts whirling through my cooling mind like the goosed scurryings of autumn leaves in the wind. Or, less dramatically, I had somehow hallucinated everything that had happened since snorting up that fateful line of coke. The little boy fell out of bed and woke up. It had all been a dream!