by Janet Capron
“Oh, well, in that case. Still, I don’t like you hanging around with them. They’re real lowlife scum, Janet.”
“I know, I know...So what’s the trouble you’re in? Don’t I have the right to know what’s going on?”
At another time, Eddie would have leapt at the word “right.” He liked to deny that I had any rights at all. He could be depended upon to deny it, in fact. But now he was impervious.
“Don’t you worry about a thing. I got it under control. There’s no trouble, no trouble at all...A slight misunderstanding between me and my new business partners, but I got it all sussed,” Eddie said.
We had been standing in the back room. Now, he lifted me up, carried me to the front, through the curtains, and deposited me gently on the bed. It was so private, quiet, and safe lying there, surrounded by the rough muslin curtains we had bought at the fabric store on First Avenue. (Eddie’s natural modesty had ensured that we would conceal where we slept and made love, at least, from the bare showcase window, which was not far from the foot of the bed.)
“Everything was great for a while. We could’ve had money, all the dope we needed, but good things never last...You woulda been so proud of me, doll, I scored big...Never mind, something else’ll come along.”
“From what I hear, you’re lucky you didn’t get killed,” I said, still bucking for a fight.
“What? Don’t listen to idle bar gossip. That’ll get you nowhere in life. Forget it, OK? It’s just you and me now, c’mon.”
Eddie was determined to be tender, so I gave up. He kissed me. We opened our mouths and let the hot breath from the bottom of our chests pour into each other. I felt really bad about the Montauk mistake with the fisherman, but I decided to put that behind me.
Our kissing became wilder then. We pulled each other’s hair, grappling the way we did when the sex was good for us. Eddie yanked off my clothes and his. He looked at my brown skin and poured himself over it, hands, mouth. He was discovering new levels of passion, going somewhere he had never been before, and so was I. We were afraid of the intensity, but that didn’t stop us. We rubbed our sweaty bodies together until it was unbearable, and Eddie slipped into me. The friction was so sweet, we would thrust together and pause, shuddering and trembling in the dark. We stared into each other’s eyes with alarm. We could see there where the ecstasy came from: beyond the skin, from our palpable, meshing souls. On the edge of consciousness, I felt at the same time as if I were being returned to myself, as if I were touching down on a deeply familiar but rarely visited place. We settled into a rhythm I hardly recognized, because it was neither too fast nor too frustratingly slow. This was Goldilocks love: at last, just right for me. I opened up all the way. I kept giving more and more of myself; I couldn’t give enough. When I came (an orgasm that started at the base of my clitoris and nipped along like a fuse until it exploded inside), he stayed with me, letting me spend it, but he was right on the edge, and he could hardly move. When he came, it wasn’t in his usual stealthy, controlled way. This time he yelped, sounding surprised, like he’d been shot. And for once, I wasn’t jealous, didn’t resent the exquisite sensation of fluid bursting, didn’t feel aroused and abandoned. Instead, I was coming with him. He belonged to me; I was satisfied.
A lucid break in the general scheme, that was all. An unaccountable night of genuine intimacy. Quixotic as I was (under the circumstances), I had been long searching for it. Our connection was an oasis of grace.
Eddie and I stroked each other, laughed quietly. In the dread first light sifting through the curtains, we peered into each other’s eyes. We were close. It was uncanny how close we were, in spite of ourselves, like the only two soldiers left alive in the field, grateful for not just all of our moving parts, but for each other.
Blackout
I woke up the next afternoon, startled by the sudden recollection of my father lying nearly dead across town. I threw myself into the shower, pulled on my shorts and top from the day before, stepped into my sneakers, not even bothering to tie the laces tight enough, and hit the street, which was tranquil and gray beneath low clouds. Overripe and exhausted from the long, dry summer, the tall, rare elm trees in Stuyvesant Park drooped with their burden of leaves. I was starving, so I grabbed a couple of dirty-water hot dogs at the far corner of the park before ducking into McCann’s for a quick shot and a beer. When I reached into my pocket to pay the hot dog vendor, I discovered, to my horror, that Eddie had already stripped me of forty of the fifty bucks I had left from the night before. After I got over what should not have been the surprise of it, I was grateful he left me the ten.
This time, I walked confidently past the nurse’s desk to the last room on the left at the end of the corridor, where I knew my father was lying in the first bed. The door stood wide open. Against the starched white hospital sheets, I saw black skin. A black man occupied my father’s bed. It was surreal, the kind of trick your dreams play on you, when one economical picture tells the whole story. I broke down standing there, staring at the stranger. I couldn’t move away. Sobbing, I covered my face with my hands. A young nurse not at all like the one from the night before came up and put her arms around me. She steered me gently into the back room, sat me down across from her at a round white table, and made me some tea. I so rarely cried, and I felt ashamed. I apologized for my outburst.
“It was just the shock,” I said.
She assured me that it was the best possible reaction. Some people did not know how to grieve, she said.
Rayfield had died, finally, a few hours after I left.
“But he promised not to, not just yet,” I kept thinking.
The first thing I did was to march into the empty saloon down the block from the hospital and announce to the bartender, who had never seen me before, that my father had just died. My hands were starting to shake and I was hoping he would buy me a drink. He didn’t; embarrassed, he offered me his perfunctory sympathies. It occurred to me that even huge quantities of booze might not help much that night, but it was the best I could do. I decided to go over to the Alamo, where maybe the dour Arthur with the drooping mustache, who was a practiced mourner, would let me run a tab for old time’s sake.
Then there are a few hours missing. I don’t know how, for instance, I got back to Sixth Street. I was in a blackout. I only know that when I came to, my key still in the door, I was watching the profiles of a couple of wiry-looking young men in the far room; one of them was holding a gun. When they heard me, they turned their heads and the gun, for the flick of a second, in my direction. Out of the shadows leaped Eddie. He knocked the gun from the one kid’s hand. It spun across the bare floor.
“No one pulls a piece on me in my house. No one,” Eddie said. His voice was oddly calm. He sounded to me very Sicilian, completely in control.
The two young men were caught off guard. They looked at me, then they looked at Eddie, then one of them ran after the gun with shaky hands. But Eddie had already scooped it up. He pointed it at both of them, who stood frozen in place, way across the apartment.
“Don’t say nothin’ to no one. You never saw us. Got that? Otherwise, we come get you. Understan’?” one of them said.
I noticed even at that distance that the one talking had many teeth missing; also, he was still just a kid.
They started to edge toward the back exit, which opened on the courtyard, all the time facing us, pointlessly waving their knives.
“You, you little cocksucker, we definitely comin’ fo’ you,” the other one said as they turned and ran outside, sprinting over the low brick wall.
When I was sure they were gone, I walked over to Eddie. He was standing there, marveling over his right hand, as if it had independently summoned the courage to knock the gun to the floor.
“Did you catch what I just did? Can you believe it?” Eddie asked.
Somewhere mixed up in there with the booze and the terror was the pride I felt. What guts he had. But then it came to me that nothing was finished. Those
little thugs would be back.
“Eddie, you gotta get outta here.”
“Whaddya mean? Forget those little slimeballs. They’re never going to bother you or me again, I’m tellin’ ya. Anyway, they were full of shit. I proved that. Didn’t you see what I just did?”
“Eddie, how do you know what they’re gonna do? You had no business bringing them here in the first place while I was gone. They don’t take you to their cribs, where their old ladies live, do they? Of course they don’t. Because the home is sacred, Eddie. It’s sacred. You do not shit where you eat. Anybody on the street knows that. Disrespect me, you disrespect yourself. This is my house. It’s sacred! You blew it. You blew it!” I screamed at him.
Then I went and sank into the only chair we had. He cornered me there, leaning over and thrusting his hands on my shoulders.
“I just saved your life, you bitch,” he said.
“Saved my life? What were those two creeps doing in my house to begin with? Get out! Go home to your mother. Leave me the fuck alone.”
“Fuck you, you cunt. This is my house, too. I ain’t leaving. I ain’t going nowhere,” Eddie yelled at me, and he slapped me hard.
“My father just died,” I said, speaking quietly now.
“Baby doll, why didn’t you say so? No wonder you’re upset. Come here, come to me. I’ll be your daddy now.” He pulled me out of the chair and put his arms around me.
I shook him loose. “That’s got nothing to do with it,” I said, turning away.
“Sure it does. You just lost the only pop you’re ever gonna have. Don’t worry, little doll, I’ll take care of you. Don’t turn your back on me. He’s dead and gone, but I’m alive. Here. Look at me. Don’t turn your back on the living.”
“‘The living’? Is that what you call yourself, you suck-ass little junkie?”
He looked at me. “Sorry, baby, but it’s your grief talking. Come to bed now. It’s over; come to bed. You need to rest.” He reached for my hand.
“Eddie, will you get out of here? As long as you’re around, I’m not safe. I need for you to leave.” I was screaming again.
He sat down. Very cool, like an exercise in cool. “Calm down, will you? I know what’s good for you now. Sleep, that’s what you need,” he said.
“Eddie, I am calm. I am very calm. Listen to my voice. I’m not going to bed until you leave,” I said.
The truth is I had no intention of going to bed at all. I needed a drink. Well far along on my bender, I could see withdrawal coming at me at sixty miles an hour, and it was unyielding; it was bigger than I was. Tremors, ringing ears as loud as sirens inside the head, sweats, darting hallucinations, nerves so raw the light felt like a thousand jabbing knives—no, I wasn’t ready yet. Add to this a new sorrow and it’s easy to get why I would have done just about anything for a drink. That was one reason, perhaps the only real reason, I wanted to get rid of Eddie. So I could go out again and drink.
“OK, doll, let’s discuss this in the morning,” he said.
Of course, Eddie wasn’t about to split in the middle of the night. If I had been rational, I would have asked him to go in the morning. Not good enough. I was scared and sad, irremediably sad. I was aching for a drink.
“No, no. You gotta go now. What if those guys come back tonight? No! I don’t wanna get killed, understan’? Get out. Get out!” I was screaming again.
Eddie walked away finally. “I’m not going anywhere, I’m tellin’ ya. You get out,” he said.
“Right, that’s exactly right, OK. But I don’t want to see you here when I get back,” I said.
“Janet, baby doll, my baby, Janet, don’t go. Come on, you’re upset. Come back! I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Hey, I mean it, hey! Janet!” Eddie yelled after me as I ran off down the street.
The bar I was headed for on the corner of Avenue A wasn’t our usual hangout, although God knows we’d been there enough times. Its only drawback was we couldn’t run a tab. I decided to go there anyway because I couldn’t deal with the prospect of Fat Jack and Red leering at me just then, and they were sure to be at the Monterey. This other place stayed open late, usually until after five in the morning, and I thought maybe, magically, in the few hours I had left, I could hustle some drinks. The front room was empty except for the man behind the stick, who was sipping a rum and Coke and listening to the jukebox play “96 Tears.” He was thumping the bar, pretending it was a drum.
“Hi, I need a drink, but I’m broke. Can you help me out?”
Then they were there, crowding in the doorway. The two little punks who had just left our house, plus another big guy with shining black skin and dreadlocks. I kind of recognized him from around. And someone else—a Puerto Rican guy wearing a tight suit and inexplicably a green carnation in his buttonhole. And then an unfamiliar white guy appeared, a pasty, pudgy Irish-looking guy. They didn’t belong together, this crew, but there they were. And they didn’t come inside. They just stood in the doorway, blocking the streetlight. The bartender said, “Get in or get out. Don’t crowd the doorway.”
The big African American guy answered him, but he was looking at me while he spoke. “We want to buy this woman a drink.”
We? The whole damn gang?
He stepped up to the bar. Then the rest of them walked away, out of sight.
“Anything the lady wants. And I’ll have a Black Russian.”
His diction was clear. He was clean-shaven and his T-shirt was spotless. Not that I trusted him. The scene gave me the creeps. But before he could change his mind, I ordered.
“Bring me a shot and a Heineken. Make it a double shot,” I said.
When the bartender put up my drinks, the guy grabbed the bottle of Heineken. He waved it in front of me. “Come outside,” he said, smiling. His teeth shone white against his African-black skin. He put some money on the bar. The bartender walked away.
I wanted the beer—and the short glass full of whiskey he was holding in his other hand—very much. I can’t tell you how much. I followed him, past the oblivious bartender, out the door. All the time, the guy was dangling the bottle of beer, the Heineken. It looked lovely, the green glass dripping cold in the muggy air. There was no breeze and the street greeted us with a blast of foul smells from the overstuffed garbage cans, their contents spilling out, pools of urine stagnating on the pavement and the occasional fresh explosion of vomit.
When we had gone far enough and he was sure the bartender could no longer see us through the window, the leader called out to his buddies.
“Let me have my drink,” I said.
They shoved me along the pavement.
“Not till we get where we’re going,” one of them said.
The leader was jostling me down the street.
“Just give me the drink. Give it to me.”
They pushed me down into a basement. The two punks went and stood guard at the door. They were silent. The white guy and the Puerto Rican threw me onto the wet concrete floor. The African American, the fake Rastafarian, took hold of my arms and yanked me along on my stomach up to where he was now sitting against the wall. The top half of my body straddled his thighs. He opened the fly of his jeans and pulled out a long, fat penis.
“You don’t have to be so rough,” I said.
“What’s that you say?” He slapped me around the face, across the head, hard. “Shut up, pork, and swallow this,” he said, shoving it down my throat.
Someone else pulled the rest of my body out straight, so that my legs were spread wide on the floor, just my head raised, gagging on the huge penis, which the ringleader kept thrusting against the back of my throat. Then one of the two men behind me put his full weight on his hands, pushing down on the small of my back to hold me still; the other one tore off my pants and reamed me. It felt like he cut me open. The pain was searing, fierce. I almost fainted; the pain brought me around. I kept trying to summon a whore’s detachment, to loosen the sphincter muscles so I could take it better, but whoever it was back there didn’t
want me to take it any better. He liked ripping into me, liked hearing me cry out each time he did it. Meanwhile, I looked up at the man in front of me, expecting to see his face hooded with pleasure; instead, he was staring back, his eyes wide with outrage. His eyeballs were the color of yellowed ivory; the sweat dripped down, but he did not blink. He stifled my screams with his penis, jamming it in deeper and harder until I stopped making any noise. He cursed me, called me “slut,” “hole,” “pork.” Then he grew quiet, too; at least I think he did. All I could hear or see was pain, endless it seemed. It felt like I was being punched in my throat and stabbed up the ass over and over. “When are they going to come?” I kept praying for them to come. I thought it would be the finish, that their orgasms would save my life. But what I failed to appreciate is that coming had nothing to do with it. This was something else.
All of a sudden, for no apparent reason, the ringleader pulled his still-erect penis out of my throat. One beat later, the guys behind me scrambled to their feet, the Puerto Rican kid pulling his swollen prick back into his suit pants. I gasped for air and collapsed, splayed out like a dead animal. But I was feeling triumph. “Nobody got their rocks off,” I kept thinking. For some reason, this was important to me. I lifted myself up on an elbow and turned my face around in time to catch the Puerto Rican kid zipping up his fly. The green carnation, a little brown around the edges, still hung from the buttonhole of his suit jacket. He was shivering.
“We got a message for your boy. You tell the little scumbag we’re going to ice him. And he won’t have to wait long,” he said.
The two punks turned and stared at me. They looked terrified. Then they ran out of the basement, almost as if I were going to come after them. The fake Rastafarian leader didn’t rush. He was the last one to leave.
“Takin’ care of my business. That’s all it was, pork,” he said.
I lay there, amazed to be out of pain. When I was sure they were gone, I spit at the damp concrete wall in front of me and then tried to yell after them, “I’m still alive, you motherfuckers. Get it? I’m still alive!” But I was too hoarse to make myself heard.