Eddie had been the only one out of all his young relatives to end his education at the high school level, and after a couple of years of watching Eddie lie around the house blitzed on green, his parents had cut him off and told him he was on his own. This was okay by Eddie, who was embarrassed by his mother’s loud manner and his father’s loud clothing. He’d had it up to there with his successful cousins and the annual Passover dinner, which he could give two shits about, and the Atlantic City ashtrays and the other tchotchkes spread out all over the house. Eddie was a Jewish boy who had been raised right and with plenty of opportunity. But Eddie didn’t want to be Jewish. His secret ambition was to be a redneck, just like his friends.
“Thought you had a date,” said Mike Frane, a heavyset guy with big arms.
“Nah,” said Eddie. “I didn’t want to go to that show anyway.”
“Bunch of tail gunners,” said Frane, “down in D.C.”
“What about your girlfriend, though?” said Dave Marshall, the meanest of the bunch, sharp featured and thin lipped. “She go to that bunny-hop show alone?”
“I guess. I don’t know. So what?”
“Bet she’s got guys sniffing around her right now like a bunch of big dogs.”
“She’ll be all right.”
“Sure she will, man.”
“Come on,” said Eddie, suddenly noticing his empty bottle and looking around for a waitress. “Let’s drink.”
Eddie bought a round of beers and shots. They drained the shots and lit up smokes. It was early, but Marshall, Frane, and the third man at the table, a stupid, quiet guy named Christianson, all looked cooked. “Fuck or fight” was their motto, but none of these guys had a chance of getting laid, so Eddie knew the way the night would turn out. He got up and went to the pay phone, dialed Donna’s number. He left another message on her machine.
Eddie went back to the men’s room off the main bar, got in the stall, did a couple of jolts from the inhaler. Out in the main room he said hey to a nice guy named Tony, lit a cigarette, stepped up to the bar, and ordered another round. He carried the beers back to the table, went back for the shots. He had a ton of energy. He didn’t really want to sit down. He didn’t know what else to do.
Dave Marshall said something to a weak-looking guy who was on his way out the door. Marshall was a coward and had made sure the guy was alone before he called him a “fucking girl.”
The table was completely covered now with bottles and shot glasses.
“Thanks for the beers, man,” said Marshall.
“Yeah, Eddie,” said Frane. “What’d you do, hit the fuckin’ number or somethin’?”
Eddie winked and thought of his parents’ address. “Eighty bucks. Played seven-three-seven on the box.”
“Well, all right,” said Christianson.
“Was wonderin’ what it was,” said Marshall. “You’re spendin’ money like a nigger in a Seven-Eleven.”
Everyone laughed. Eddie Golden closed his eyes, drank down his Jack. He wiped his chin with his sleeve.
Eddie looked around the bar. He missed Donna. He wondered where she was.
Donna Morgan stood at the left corner of the stage at the 9:30, drinking down the last of her beer. Dimitri Karras was pushing through the crowd, a couple of Buds in his upraised hands, trying to get to Donna.
The bass man, second guitar, and drummer were out and prepping their instruments while “How Soon Is Now” played through the sound system. This would be the single Karras would think of when he thought 1986, the way “Brass in Pocket” would always mean 1980 and “Dancing with Myself” would always trigger 1981 in his head.
He got to Donna, handed her a beer. She leaned against the black wall and drank. Her forehead was bulleted with sweat. The place was ass-to-elbow, humid year round, and always smelled like something between piss and perspiration. It was the best live music venue in town.
Karras had wanted her to see the headliner, Tommy Keene, telling her that this was what the “real shit” was all about. He had talked about it all the way downtown, as they traded hits from Karras’s amber vial, and down the long hall entrance to the club, where Cure-cut Robert Smith look-alikes in long overcoats and other kids in mostly black lounged around, talking and smoking cigarettes. Karras was so excited that Donna didn’t have the heart to remind him that she had been in the audience the night Keene opened for Graham Parker at the Wax, the same night she had run into Karras when he had affected his new-wave mask. Karras had always been slow on the uptake when it came to memories; he liked to say that he “lived in the moment,” which Donna knew was his way of sugarcoating but not excusing his thoughtless nature.
Keene came out in a vintage sport jacket and jeans, and launched into a set of propulsive, guitar-driven pop from his new album, Songs from the Film. L.A. and Geffen had him for the time being, but he would always be the mid-Atlantic Alex Chilton, and he would always be D.C.’s After the bridge of “Baby Face,” when the break built and crested into the chorus, Keene closed-eyed and singing right up to the mike, the band driving and tight, the whole club had gone forward to the stage, and in the crush, Karras’s arm had gotten around Donna’s shoulders, and he was thinking, as the cocaine and alcohol married beautifully in his brain, This is One of Those Nights, and maybe I won’t die, just maybe I will live forever.
Karras leaned into Donna at the end of the first set, told her it was time to go. There was another band he wanted to see tonight across town. Donna shrugged, said all right. Karras tipped Mike, the front-of-the-house tender, on the way out the door. Out in the night, they felt the electric shock of cold air against their sweat. Karras put his arm around Donna to warm her as they walked west on F. Then he stopped, turned her toward him, kissed her at the head of the alley a few doors down from the club. Her tongue, rough as a cat’s, slid across his. He could feel the warmth of her groin as he pushed himself against her. She moved back a step, brushed damp hair away from her face, and smiled.
All right, he thought. I’m in.
Marcus Clay walked down Indiana Avenue from the courthouse and took the steps up to the second floor of the Dutch Treat, a nondescript neighborhood watering hole near the National Archives. He had a seat at the bar, ordered a beer, nursed it while he watched the end of the Alabama/Xavier game on the house set. This place was okay. He could keep to himself, have a slow glass of cold beer, watch a little ball, let the tension ease on out of his shoulders and back. Forget about how he had acted the fool, once again, with Elaine.
When the game ended, Clay took the Red Line back up to Dupont, picked up his ride, and drove over to U Street. A teenage boy was hanging out front of the store, standing next to the pay phone mounted on the brick wall. This time of night there was always some young drug boy leaning against his car at the curb, waiting for that phone to ring or looking to make a call.
“You got a reason to be out here?” said Clay, his hand on Real Right’s front door.
“Just goin’ on about my business,” said the young man, punctuating his response with a tough roll of his shoulders.
“This here is my business you’re leaning up against. Don’t need you out here scarin’ away my customers.”
The young man smiled. “I ain’t seen no kind of customers, scared or otherwise, in nary a day.”
“Go on, boy.” Clay took a step toward the young man, who was half his size. “Go.”
The young man took his time, but he went.
Clay entered the store. Cootch was behind the register, turning down the volume on the new Africa Bambaata.
“Hey, boss.”
“Cootch.”
“Anything?”
“Not one customer all night.”
“Damn.”
“Yeah, I know. Don’t worry, though, Marcus. This whole street’s gonna turn around, soon as this Metro construction folds up. U Street’s gonna come back.”
“They been talkin’ about that shit for years. Question is, will I be able to hold on until it does.”<
br />
“I heard that.”
Marcus rubbed his face. “You got plans tonight?”
“Was gonna take my girl out to a show. Game of Death’s playin’ down at L’Enfant Plaza.”
“Your girl into Bruce Lee?”
“She’d be into Chuck Norris if it meant spendin’ the evening with me.”
“Go on, then, man, take the night off. I’ll count out the drawer.”
“Thanks,” said Cootch.
Clay said, “Ain’t no thing.”
After Cootch had locked the door behind him and gone, Clay put the Impressions: Sixteen Greatest Hits album on the platter and turned up the amp. He loved his Curtis Mayfield, loved all the positive music with the message of uplift and pride that had come up off the streets in the late sixties and early seventies. He knew that he should have kept up with the newer jams, owning four record stores like he did, but the truth was, he just couldn’t relate.
A kid knocked on the front door. Clay moved forward, recognizing the Raiders jacket. As he got closer he saw it was the half-pint who hung on the corner down the street. Clay made a cutting motion across his throat. The kid knocked again.
Clay used his key to open the door. “What’s up, Youngblood?”
“Can I come in?”
“We’re closed. I’m just countin’ out.”
“I ain’t lookin’ to buy nothin’. It’s just… I’m cold, man.”
“Name’s not ‘man.’ Name’s Mr. Clay.”
“I’m cold, Mr. Clay.”
Clay had a look around the dark block. The night air had numbed his hand, still wrapped around the door. “You down here alone?”
“Yessir.”
“Where your kin at, boy?”
“I live up on Fairmont with my Granmom. She’s havin’ company tonight.”
“You shouldn’t be runnin’ around out here alone.”
“Yessir.”
Clay opened the door. “Come on in and warm up. Mind, I’m just about done. You’re gonna have to take off then.”
The kid came in. Clay noticed he had on those new Michael Jordan Nikes all the kids were into. Clay went back behind the counter and turned down the music while the kid flipped through the records in the racks.
“Dag,” said the kid, “you got the new Run-D.M.C.?”
“Got it all,” said Clay.
“You wanted to, you could take home any of the records in this joint.”
“I’d be takin’ food out of my own mouth.”
“What you mean?”
“I own this place.”
The kid cocked his head. “How’d you get it?”
“Hard work.”
Clay continued to count the bills from the drawer. He let his eyes drift for a moment, saw the kid dribbling an imaginary basketball in one of the aisles, pull up and shoot.
Clay said, “You play ball?”
“A little,” said the kid. “Prob’ly ain’t gonna be too tall, though….”
“Yeah, well, hardly anyone gets to the NBA. Nothin’ wrong with playin’ just for fun, long as you do your schoolwork, too. Ball’s healthy, and it keeps you off the streets like these other knuckleheads out here.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“You know, huh. You watch that Maryland game today?”
“Saw the highlights.”
“Lenny Bias had—”
“Twenty-six.”
Clay made some markings in his ledger. He closed the book, looked at the kid. “What’s your name, Youngblood?”
“T.”
“Your given name, not your street name.”
“Anthony Taylor.”
“How old are you, Anthony?”
“Thirteen.”
“Don’t be tellin’ stories. You look around eleven to me. Am I right?”
“How you know so much, mister?”
“You live long enough, you naturally learn.”
“My granmom says the same thing.”
Clay eyed Anthony Taylor. “You want to do somethin’ for me while I count out?”
“What?”
“There’s a broom in the back room, leaning up against my desk. And a dustpan right next to it. You feel like sweeping up out here, I’d be obliged.”
“Will I get paid?”
“We’ll take a look at the job you do first. Decide then.”
Clay watched the kid’s miniswagger as he headed toward the back room. This Anthony Taylor was just eight years older than Marcus Jr. Clay wondered, would his little boy be out on these streets someday, just hanging like this kid? He thought of Anthony Taylor on the corner, standing out there in the cold.
“I swear to God,” said Clay in a very soft voice, “I’ll never let you be that kind of alone.”
Richard Tutt parked his Bronco with the oversized tires in a lot filled with trucks with oversized tires and walked into the Gold’s Gym on Georgia Avenue. He changed into his shorts and tank top, went out into the gym, did some warm-ups in front of a wall-to-wall mirror, and then began to pump hard iron.
Tutt only did free weights. The Nautilus and the Universal were for beach-boy types, slope-backed lawyers, kids, and girls, and anyway, you couldn’t get that vein action going with those machines like you could with the free weights. Or that sound. He liked the clang of the plates.
Tutt did some benches with a spotter he knew, then went to the curl bar to work on his guns. He was proud of his arms; he liked to pyramid the sets, really max it out so the veins popped on his biceps like fat pink wire.
He pushed it hard. It helped when he thought of people he’d like to kill. Like Tyrell’s enforcer, Short Man Monroe. Short Nigger was more like it. Like Tutt would ever let some sawed-off little spade give him any kind of shit. And now this toy fuck was going to try and show Tutt up, chase off those kids that were playing dealer down around U, or find the money that was missing from Junie’s car. Tutt wouldn’t let that happen. He was still a cop, and Tyrell and the rest of them were nothing more than the shit on his shoe. Sure, he’d taken their money, and he’d keep taking it as long as the ride lasted. But they didn’t own him. It was Tutt who was in charge. They’d find that out eventually. Then he’d move on to the next bunch of geniuses, because there was always someone out there looking to get shook down.
Tutt finished a full circuit, glanced in the mirror, twisted his torso to check himself out. Was he getting a little small? Hell, he’d never be as big as he was that summer down at Ocean City, when he was working as a bouncer at the Hurricane Club, lifting with those Salisbury State boys with the close-set eyes, shooting monkey hormones, walking down the beach, and looking big as Joe Jacoby. That was the summer they had taken this little waitress out on a boat, gotten her drunk on Busch beer, asked her if she was a good girl or a bad girl. She had smiled coyly and said, “I guess I’m half good and half bad,” and Tutt’s friend Dewey said, “Is this the bad half?” and put his hand, big as a bear’s paw, right on her snatch. Man, did she jump back. And did what they told her to do after that. That was one crazy summer. He’d never be that maxed out again, but he’d sworn off the ’roids ever since, because right after that he had come back and taken the test to be a cop. No drugs of any kind since then. You came up positive on a test, it could get you bounced right off the force.
Tutt wiped his face dry with a towel as he walked toward the locker room. He passed a guy he recognized, good-sized arms but talked kind of funny, like maybe he worked in a library or some shit like that. He stopped to tell the guy a joke.
“Hey, buddy,” said Tutt. “Know what ‘gay’ stands for?”
“No.”
“ ‘Got AIDS yet?’ ”
If the guy smiled then Tutt missed it. “Oh, you mean like an acronym.”
“Huh?”
“You know, each letter of the word stands for another word.”
“Whatever.”
Tutt entered the locker room shaking his head, wondering when they started letting pencil-necks join this place.
Tutt showered. He got dressed next to a Montgomery County cop, last name of Penny. Penny had a second-degree black belt. He claimed the dojo workout made him skinny, so he came here three times a week to pump iron.
“Hey, Tutt. What you carrying these days?”
“Police–issue thirty-eights. But the solid citizens they got us goin’ up against got autos holding fourteen to a clip. Mini-Tec nines, all that. So you can believe I’m packin’ something else.”
“What?”
“Got me a forty-five. A thirty-eight shoots nice and straight and all that, but the Colt’s got more stopping power.”
“Tell me about it.”
“And there’s something else.” Tutt looked around the locker room, lowered his voice. “When the jungle heats up and boils over, you’re gonna see a lot of those candy-ass National Guardsmen dead in the street. They carry forty-fives. Gonna be a lot of ammo lying around out there for the real soldiers, the frontline cops, to pick up and slap right into our guns.”
Penny low-chuckled. “Shit, Tutt. You better watch what you say with that jungle shit. Anyway, I thought your partner was a brother.”
“He is. But he’s one of the good ones. You can believe that.” Tutt shut his locker. “Take care, Penny.”
“You, too.”
Tutt went outside to the pay phone. He searched his pocket for a coin, watched a short female lifter walk toward the gym. She had on leg warmers and a sweatshirt worn off one shoulder, her tank-top strap showing. Reminded Tutt of that Flashdance chick who everyone claimed was half jig.
“What a feeling, sweetness,” said Tutt, giving her a toothy smile. “Ain’t nothin’ I like better than a woman with nice, strong thighs.”
“Pig,” said the girl, walking quickly through the front door.
The Sweet Forever Page 7