What’s Happening?

by John Nicholas Iannuzzi

  9

  The shadows in Johnson’s were not as dense as they had been earlier in the evening. Laura was alone as she returned from a walk to Dani’s. She stood in the doorway, closing the door behind her by leaning against it. She blew on her cold hands as she studied the wilting shadows, hoping she knew one of them, wanting to talk to someone. She was feeling abandoned and alone again. Silently, she wished that she didn’t mind being alone. She wished she could become accustomed to it.

  “Hi, Sammy.”

  “Hi, Laura.” Sammy was behind the bar drying glasses. “How’re you doin’?”

  “All right.” Her words were snappy, monosyllabic. She feared saying anything too long, involved, or loud, afraid someone might hit her, or make fun of her, or in some way make her feel foolish. “Rita or Jeannie come back?”

  “Naw. They were here with two cats before—you know, you were with them. But I haven’t seen them since they split about an hour ago.”

  “Ohh, … Thanks.”

  She sank even further into her feeling of being abandoned. Now she couldn’t even return to the apartment for fear of again intruding awkwardly on Jeannie or Rita. None of her friends were standing at the bar. She spied Gene leaning against the jukebox in the rear. Except for the whites of his eyes and a white scar across his left cheek, his opaque, ebony complexion blended into the dimness of the cafe. The scar gave him a savage, brutal appearance. No friend he, Gene reminded Laura of a Nazi, or some other such barbarian. Gene was cruel—vicious mouthed and sarcastic. He was always mocking and deprecating everything around him.

  Laura walked toward the back; even Gene’s contempt was more acceptable than aloneness. Around Gene’s neck, from a leather thong, hung an uneven-shaped medallion of intertwined silver fingers.

  The Villagers, throwing off the robes of Uptown’s oppressors, taking up those of the Village, inundate themselves in a stream or mores and tastes as muddy and beclouded as the one abandoned. The garb, the mannerisms, the ways of speaking, the ideals, the pictures to see, the books that are a must, the beards, the women’s long, flowing, styleless hair fall into conventional Village patterns. The world of the outside is replaced by a world banded by other frenzied conventions. The Villagers have only run a short way, and now stand waving their fist at the cold oppressor, resenting and rejecting every aspect of the outside world. But they have not run fast enough, nor straight enough, nor long enough to get away from themselves. They are the same inside; they are only garbed differently.

  Laura walked to the back and sat on a stool by the end of the bar. She twisted on the swivel seat until she faced the jukebox and Gene. He stared at her coldly, not speaking a word. His arms were folded on his chest. Laura too was wordless, she from apprehension. She became self-conscious.

  “Hi, Gene. How’re you?” she said finally.

  “I’m okay, baby.” Only his lips moved, and they slightly. “How’s yourself?”

  “Okay. Where’ve you been lately? I haven’t seen you in a while.”

  “I been workin’ my way through the A.A.” Still he did not move or smile.

  “You’re a real card tonight, Gene.” She tried to chuckle.

  His face remained stone. Laura stopped chuckling. Nervousness began to mount within her.

  “Always, baby, … you know that.”

  Gene enjoyed being cruel to Laura. It bolstered his feelings of power to viciously taunt a weak, helpless person. It made up for his own inadequacy.

  “Yeah, I guess I do,” she replied. “I’m going to get a job tomorrow, you know? I think … I’m supposed to go to the employment agency tomorrow.”

  “Crazy …” His eyes bored into her face, purposely trying to outstare her. Laura was a pushover. “Lend me five bucks when you get your first pay check, okay, baby? I’m broke lately.”

  “Hey …” she quipped, a vague smile on her face, trying to capture the humorous note she didn’t feel. “I didn’t even get it yet. Take it easy, hanh?”

  “How’s everything these days over at the Club Lisa?” he asked insinuatingly.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said hesitantly, dropping her vague smile. “I haven’t been there in a while.”

  “What’s the matter, baby, lose your taste for the girls?” He chuckled.

  Laura frowned guiltily as her dark life was layed bare.

  “I just figured to cut that crap out,” she explained. “It’s crazy stuff. I don’t even know how I got mixed up with that shit.” Laura’s honesty was painful to her. She felt incapable of successful lies, however, and detection, she knew, could be more painful.

  “What are you doing now, hanging in Santo’s with the gay boys, the fags?”

  “No, … I been trying to get my head back on right.” Her voice was very soft, almost inaudible. “Rita and Jeannie have been helping me … and like that, you know? I’ve been listening to them, and they put the Lisa down real bad. So, … I don’t go.”

  “You got two great advisors there, baby.”

  “It’s better than nobody,” she snapped in defense. “Better than everybody that ever tried before … supposed to have tried anyway.”

  Gene shrugged unconcernedly.

  “Hi, Laura. Hi Gene,” said Dick, one of the guys who always hung around in Johnson’s. “How’re all the good people in Johnson’s tonight?” He smiled, revealing crooked, pointed teeth. His face was thin and sharp-featured, rat-like.

  “Hi, Dick,” said Laura, glad to change the subject of conversation.

  “Dick … how’s the boy?” Gene slapped him hard on the back.

  “Okay. What’s happening, man?”

  “Nothin’. You?”

  “Ehh …” Dick shrugged.

  “You guys want anything to drink?” asked Raoul Johnson, walking to their end of the bar. With no women around to interest him, Raoul was catering to his other love—money.

  “Yeah, I’ll take a beer,” Dick said, smiling his thin smile.

  Raoul pulled a bottle of beer from the cooler.

  “What’s happening?” Raoul asked.

  “Nothin’.”

  They were all silent. Raoul leaned forward, his elbows on the bar. Dick sucked his beer out of the bottle. The others looked around the cafe. The other patrons were murmuring quietly. Gene glanced at Laura, then slowly smiled a leering, secret smile.

  “I was just telling Laura that the word’s gotten around that she gives a mean blow job,” Gene remarked to the other two men. “I mean, I heard when she goes down, like she really goes down.” He watched from the side of his eyes to see if he had hit his mark. He had. Laura began to squirm on her seat.

  “Is that right?” Raoul asked, accepting a part in the jibe, noticing Laura’s discomfort.

  “I heard the same thing myself,” Dick chimed in. “Is that the truth, Laura?”

  “That’s a hell of a nasty thing to say about me,” Laura complained mildly, calmly, knowing they purposely taunted her, wanting her to be terrified. “No, sir, man, that’s one thing I’d never do. Not me.” She held onto the bottom of the stool with both hands.

  “I heard you did it great. What the hell, there’s nothing wrong with doing something and doing it well.” Gene sneered, discontent with her calmness. “Isn’t that right, Dick?”

  “Sure is …” Dick was a superb agreer. He reveled in being considered part of a theory, part of a group, part of anything. “And you should share your talent with the rest of the world. You know, like maybe you can take the three of us on.” He leered. His eyes slid to the corner of their sockets to see the reaction of Gene and Raoul. His forced smile rippled into a genuine smile of relief as the others laughed. He threw his head back, his mouth wide, chaotic noises escaping.

  “You bastards. That’s rotten, filthy rotten.” The crude rib began to shatter Laura’s forced composure. She wanted them to stop, but she didn’t know exactly how to stop them without saying something childish at which they would laugh, or something sarcastic at which they would become angry. S
he was surrounded and trapped.

  “You look like you could do a real great job,” Raoul snickered. His supercilious, professional-Negro air was coming through. He enjoyed taunting this little white ragamuffin. “Let’s see you open your mouth. Come on. Open.”

  “You guys are terrible. What a thing to say to me.” She began to tremble inside. “I never did that, never, agghh …” Her head shuddered in revulsion.

  “Think you could handle this?” asked Raoul, who had gone to the other end of the bar and brought back something under his apron. “Think you could handle this?” He revealed a long piece of rubber hose that had been painted flesh color to resemble the male organ. “What do you think?” He dangled the rubber hose in front of Laura.

  “Yow … Get that thing out of here,” she screamed, pushing back on her stool in alarm. The stool fell backwards. She screamed again as she fell.

  Gene grabbed her under the armpits as the stool fell to the floor. All the guys laughed as Gene held Laura in midair, returning her to the conversation. Laura managed a scared smile as she stood and righted the stool.

  “I could introduce you to a very good friend of mine that size,” Raoul suggested, his eyes narrow, a thin smile on his face.

  “Here I am,” Dick exclaimed, outspreading his arms, a sneery smile twisting his mouth.

  “I guess you don’t want to know me,” said Raoul. “I’m a lot bigger than that.”

  “Come on you guys. Like, you know I’m the champ when it comes to that,” Gene boasted.

  “How about this size,” Raoul suggested, further taunting Laura. He brandished a shot glass, moving it near Laura’s mouth to see if she could fit the rim into her mouth. “Think you can handle this size?” He laughed.

  “Come on now. You guys are awful.” She shuddered with revulsion. “Who could ever do a thing like that?” She wanted them to stop now, but it was too late. Anything she said or did would be laughed at. She gritted her teeth angrily, searching for an opportunity to escape without being mocked.

  “Baby,” said Gene, “there’s nothing wrong with going down on a person. Man, like I dig it myself.”

  “I’m hip you do, man,” Raoul injected with a sly snicker.

  “I’m talking about women, man, … women. Only someone like you who goes down on guys would think of something like that. When I go down on somebody, man, like all they got between their legs is hair.” He stared fiercely at Raoul.

  “I dig that kind of action myself,” Dick leered boldly.

  “I didn’t hear any cat mention goin’ down on a guy. I guess you just got that on your mind,” added Raoul.

  Gene glared at the smirk on Raoul’s face.

  “It keeps you healthy, you know?” Dick released through his rat mouth, enjoying the pleasure of hearing weird words bandied about. “It’s good for everything. Makes hair grow on your chest.”

  “I got hair on my chest,” said Raoul. “I need something to part it.”

  They all laughed loudly, boisterously, enjoying the evil release. The pace of their evil feast was increasing, reaching a frenzy pitch.

  “How about we have a contest to see who can eat Laura the best, and she’ll go down on the winner,” Gene suggested laughingly. The others laughed and howled their approval.

  Laura’s smile sickened further. How could she get out of there, she wondered? She didn’t care where she went, how cold it was, how alone she would be.

  “You guys are crazy.” She was stunned, unable to say more. If only Sammy would come to her end of the bar, she thought. He’d protect her. She could escape then.

  “Man, I’ll eat her so much she won’t be able to stand it,” Raoul boasted.

  “Are you kidding, man?” Gene said dismissing Raoul’s statement. He began to say something. The words described something he would do to Laura. It was so revolting, so degenerate, so physically, humanly inconceivable and fantastic that the rest of his statement was blotted from her ears as her insides wrenched. Her stomach began to pull up toward her throat.

  The group laughed raucously at Gene’s comment. They reveled in this ribald horror and taunting.

  Laura’s smile was rancid as her insides swirled.

  “I’d crawl bare-ass over a mile of broken beer bottles just to hear her piss in a canteen cup from a telephone pole,” Dick added irrelevantly, not to be outdone.

  The group snickered.

  Laura steadied herself on her seat. She readied herself to leave but she felt faint. She felt she’d fall on the floor if she stood up.

  “I’ll see you later,” Raoul said as he began to walk to the front to greet some well-dressed people who entered. He smiled at them, pointing gallantly to a table.

  “You guys are awful, really awful,” Laura said seriously, too upset to protest more. “You make somebody feel awful. I don’t mind talking like that and kidding around, but don’t keep it up like that.”

  “Aww, we were only kidding you, baby, you know that,” Gene said placatingly, not wanting her to leave yet.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” she apologized, not caring one way or another.

  They all stood quietly, looking around the bar. Laura was trying to edge off the stool.

  “I’m going to cut, man,” Dick announced. “I’ve got to git. I’ll see you around.”

  “Okay, man. Take it easy.”

  “Which way are you walking?” Laura asked.

  “I’m going to Pandora’s. You going over?”

  “Yeah, I’m going home. I think I’ll go now. See you, Gene. So long, Sammy.”

  Sammy didn’t hear her weak voice through the noise and the music in the background.

  “Sammy!” she called louder.

  He looked up.

  “So long.”

  “So long, take it easy.” He smiled.

  Raoul leered condescendingly as she followed Dick out the door.

  “What are you doing these days, Dick?” Laura asked to start a new subject as they walked toward the Avenue of the Americas. She wasn’t enthralled by Dick’s company, but where else could she go? To whom could she speak? She couldn’t go to the apartment, and every place else was dead, empty.

  “I’m taking pictures now. Remember I was working for Joe Turner a while ago. Well, like I saved some bread and bought me some equipment, and like I started on my own. Now I’m my own boss.”

  “That’s pretty cool. How’re you doing?”

  “Paying my rent, and like that. You know, I’m not knocking down any doors, but I’m keeping going.”

  “That’s great.”

  “You’re getting a job tomorrow, hanh?” he inquired.

  “Yeah. How’d you know?”

  “I was standing right behind you when you were talking to Gene, wasn’t I?”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s right. Yeah, I might get the job tomorrow. I need the money.”

  “You’re still shacking with Jeannie and Rita, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, but still, I have to pay rent and buy myself some clothes and things.”

  “Tell your old man to send you some loot.”

  “Yeah … Fat chance of that. Christ, they’re always complaining about money. You know, there’s so many kids and all …” What a lousy, lonely world, she thought. If only people would listen to her once in a while. If only they’d stop taunting her.

  “You have a lot of brothers?”

  “Only one brother, but I have four sisters. They’re all older than me. Everybody’s older than me. By the time I’d get any money from them I’d be walking in the street with no clothes on.”

  “Listen, baby, if you find yourself without any clothes, you don’t have to walk the streets. You can come over to my place.” He fluttered his eyebrows.

  “Thanks a lot,” Laura said curtly, looking ahead.

  “What does your old man do?”

  “Works as a longshoreman and gets drunk.”

  “Those longshoremen get good money.”

  “So do bars and crap games and shylocks an
d all the rest of the working man’s sucker traps.” These revived thoughts angered her. She was tired of being abused, stepped on.

  “You know, I never heard you say so much at one time.”

  She didn’t look at him. She was talking to herself out loud, looking straight ahead.

  “I can talk. I can say a lot of things. Of course, where I lived, Christ, you couldn’t say anything out of the way. My old man is the kind of guy that believes in hitting women and children. Everybody was a threat to him, everybody was a stranger. He’d come home rough and tough all the time, always showing he was the boss. He used to beat my old lady and the kids, and get drunk and gamble. He was a gem. After a while, my old lady, with nothing else to do, got on her own booze jags, … and then all the kids really had to shift for themselves. One of my sisters got picked up for prostitution.”

  “No kidding?” That was keen to Dick.

  Laura didn’t answer. She couldn’t bring herself to say offensive things.

  “I was the youngest. Instead of that being in my favor, that was my tough luck. I wasn’t only helpless, but abandoned. I had to take care of myself.”

  “How about your brothers and sisters. Didn’t they help you?”

  “They were so busy working, keeping their souls and bodies together, they could hardly be bothered with me. What the hell, I was only a skinny kid. I don’t mind that they were all worrying about themselves. Everyone had it tough. My old man might have been poor, hard working, all that crap—although he wouldn’t have been poor if he didn’t gamble and drink so much—but that didn’t mean he should have five kids. That’s the trouble with poor people; they’re poor because they’re ignorant, too God damn dumb to get out of their rut, to do anything about it. They’re so God damn dumb that they keep getting themselves further and further involved, drinking to forget they’re poor, gambling, hoping that they’ll make it the easy way because they can’t figure any other way to get out of the hole. Ever go to a race track?”

  “No, I can’t afford to get into one.”

  “My old man gave me a big day out once. Took me to Jamaica with him. All you see around there are these sleasy characters trying to make the big time the easy way. All they have to do is hit one big one, a few small ones—too lazy to figure out something that’ll really get them out of the hole. They want it the easy way, without thinking. I can’t forgive him, say he was too dumb to realize the difference. He should have been able to realize the difference. Either that or have been sterilized. I wasn’t unhappy when I wasn’t existing. I didn’t know the difference. And some idiot who couldn’t control his loins, who had to have an emotional release from the hell he continually intensified for himself, had five kids. He doesn’t know a fucking thing about kids …”