An hour later, over another plate of meatballs, she asked if I would take her home, way out in the East End. Sure, what better way of sobering up than driving ten miles out your way. It was raining when we stepped outside, my car a block away. She told me to drive back and pick her up. One car down from mine stood the uptight woman who’d embarrassed me, her black sequin dress soaking wet, looking under the hood of a Ford Escort.
Before I could get my keys out she said, “Excuse me, you got cables?”
Nice-like, the get-outta-my-face attitude gone.
“What?” Doreen asked again, bringing me back.
“Nothing. I was just thinking about the first time we met.”
“Yeah, you and Louisiana were kicking it then.”
“I wasn’t kicking it with her. Just willing to give her a ride home. It was raining, remember? Louisiana, was that her name?”
“No, at first it was Tallulah, you know, the city? East of Monroe? She gained weight, changed it to cover the state.”
“Was your battery really dead? I touched the cables together, got a big spark.”
Doreen laughed. “No, sugar, I waited in the rain knowing you would come out and rescue me and forget all about your fat girlfriend. The battery wasn’t dead, the alternator was.”
Moving to her I said, “I’m glad it was,” and hugged her tight. “You remember our first real date? We hiked Pinnacle Mountain, took us all day to reach the top. That was the first time I held you in my arms.”
“I remember.” Her voiced dropped: “I want a good life for us, John. For Lewis, you, and me. That’s all I want. Lewis is not your child, I know that.” I loosened my grip on her. “You don’t like him, that’s what I don’t understand.”
I released her, stepped back and started to say, “He doesn’t like me,” but that sounded childish.
“He tries to be nice to you, but you shoot him down every time,” Doreen said. “He really tries hard. Last week he told me he had a bad dream, you were trying to hurt him and me, you’d gone crazy. It scared him. I promised him you wouldn’t hurt us and then you try to send us through the windshield. Told your mother about it and she said, ‘Nothing but the devil,’ and that we both needed Jesus. Okay, I thought, that’s the answer. Get you in church, we both stand up there with Reverend Wilson, the next day you’re drinking beer. I don’t know what to do.”
The defeated look in her eyes stopped me from saying what I wanted to say: Lewis was a spoiled brat whose bad dream resulted from overeating.
Doreen wiped a spot on the counter with a dishtowel. On my way out she said, “I love you and I would like to stay married…” She paused but kept wiping the same spot. “My son comes first. Myself, my marriage, you, all that is secondary. My son comes first.”
I said, “I hear you, Doreen,” and walked out of the kitchen and then came right back. “You know, I was thinking maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea if Lewis spend some time with his real father. You never know, he hang around his old man, sees what he’s like, realizes he and I don’t get along so bad after all.”
She stopping wiping, stood straight to her full height, her eyes narrowed and locked on mine.
Something told me to drop it, but I didn’t. “By the way, who’s his real father?”
Her shoulders flinched. Calm, she said, “Does it matter? Far as Lewis is concerned he’s dead. Far as I’m concerned he’s dead.” Then, raising her voice a notch: “So why in the world does it matter to you?”
“Because it’s such a big mystery, Doreen. A mystery makes people curious. He’s in prison, what? The nuthouse? A sex offender? You tell me I’ll stop guessing.”
She glared at me but didn’t speak.
“Or…maybe, you’re still in love with him?”
That did it. She threw the dishtowel in the sink, brushed past me. Following her to the bedroom I said, “At least tell me the man’s name. Why can’t you tell me his name?”
Doreen responded by slamming the bedroom door and locking it.
My turn to sleep on the couch; the next night, too. Wednesday night the bedroom door wasn’t locked so I eased into bed beside her. Then I got cocky, thinking a little sex might patch things up, and squeezed her breast. That got her in a mood…to get up and go sleep on the couch.
Chapter 3
Friday evening I drove home with one thought in mind: screw Doreen. Almost two weeks without sex, way too long, and perusing Berry’s Playboy magazines while he attended a meeting didn’t help matters at all.
My plan was to endure another Friday night with Lewis crunching and snorting in front of the television and then take Doreen into the bedroom and screw her before his stomach erupted.
First person I see upon entering the apartment was Vida, Doreen’s girlfriend, sitting in my recliner wearing a purple dress and matching shoes. On the couch was some guy I’d never seen before.
“Is that you, John?” Doreen said from the bedroom.
“Yeah.” I said hi to Vida and nodded at the guy. Vida smiled, but the guy kept watching television. Jeopardy. He answered a tough question before any of the contestants had a chance.
In the bedroom, Doreen, in the same dress as Vida’s, stood before the mirror applying lipstick. Man, she loved that stuff. “Lewis,” she shouted, “are you ready?”
“What’s up?”
“We’re going to a revival in Fort Smith. Reverend Robinson. You wanna come?” Before I could say yes indeed, she said, “We’ll get back late. Vida said around two, three.”
“When you decide this? I was thinking we’d watch a movie, spend quality time together.” Do the horizontal boogie.
“Reverend Robinson, Vida says he’s one of the best preachers in the state. Her brother, Mookie, he’s having problems with his wife, staying with her for a while. You mind him staying here with you till we get back?”
“What, he can’t stay by hisself?”
“Lewis, hurry up, we’re running late!” To me: “If you mind say so. She doesn’t allow him to stay at her house when she’s not there.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
Lewis came into the room wearing a white shirt, brown tie, black slacks, and brown shoes. Doreen buttoned his sleeves and adjusted the tie.
“He has problems,” she said, and I followed her and Lewis into the living room. “Vida, you ready?”
Vida got up and gestured toward Mookie.
Doreen said, “John, are you okay with Mookie staying?”
Putting me on the spot.
I looked at the guy, sorta heavyset, shaved head, wearing a black-and-gold Steelers jumpsuit, gold tennis shoes, and said, “I guess.”
Going out the door, Doreen said, “Call me on Vida’s cell if you need me. The number in my book on the dresser.”
Vida said, “Keep an eye on Mookie. Don’t let him out your sight.”
When the door closed I said, “John, that’s on my birth certificate,” and shook his hand.
“Mookie,” he said, and went back to watching television, Hollywood Squares now. “Yo, G, you got any beer?”
“Naw, but I could go…We can go get some. You wanna ride with me?”
He liked the Cadillac, said it was tight, asked what year it was, how much I paid for it. I stopped wondering what was his problem, figured a guy who could answer a question on Jeopardy and appreciated a fine Cadillac couldn’t be that messed up.
I bought the beer, a six-pack of Busch Light, and drove back telling him about the receipts I found in the glove compartment when I bought the car.
“A buncha em for oil changes, tune-ups, brake jobs, you name it. Three of em for the lock on the back door. A geezer, a very old geezer, owned it, kept it up. That’s why it doesn’t have a buncha miles on it.”
“Nice, G,” he said. “Nice.”
When we got back he headed straight for the bathroom, stayed in there a long time. He came out, sweat glistening his shaved head, and got a beer and went bac
k to the bathroom.
The air conditioner on, I figured he was constipated, having a rather rough go at it.
Two empty beer cans were on the table when he finally came out, Scarface showing on a local channel, most of the good scenes deleted.
“Anything in the kitchen you want, help yourself,” I said, going to the bathroom. He didn’t answer. A cloud of air freshener hit me when I opened the door and I thought, man, this guy in bad shape. At least he’s courteous.
Back in the living room I noticed he seemed different, something in the way he was concentrating on the movie--not watching but concentrating.
Making small talk I said, “That’s bull,” while Tony Montana, handcuffed to a shower rod, talked smack to a guy coming at him with a chainsaw. “Betcha one man in a million would do that. Average man would crap his drawers, wouldn’t he?”
Mookie didn’t respond, and I wondered if I’d said the wrong thing, with his chronic constipation and all.
Minutes later he got up and went back to the bathroom.
The scene where Tony Montana snorts coke off his desk, I fell asleep. Later, the front door opened and I woke up. Mookie walked in, locked the door.
“What time is it?” I said.
Heading to the bathroom he pointed to the clock above the television. Almost eleven.
In the hallway I spoke to the bathroom door. “Mookie, I’ma call it a night. If you go out let me know so I can lock the door. Okay?”
He may have said yeah, but it sounded like yip, as if he was holding his breath. There was some Metamucil in the hall closet and I thought to offer it to him, but decided it wasn’t my problem.
In my dream Doreen and I were having sex, at my mama’s house of all places. Usually Doreen put a pillow over her head to muffle noises Lewis might hear. Away from home, however, she was shouting loudly. The noise would wake Mama and she would come into the kitchen and ask what the hell we were doing in her house.
“Yo, G, something buggin’!”
We were busted. Mama would tell everybody, even Reverend Wilson. Wait a minute! Mama didn’t whisper, nor would she use those words.
“Yo, G, wake up!”
I felt a hand on my shoulder. At first I wasn’t sure what I was looking at. Then Mookie moved a little, and I knew exactly what it was. I jumped up. Mookie was butt naked, his package hanging to his knees.
“Hey, man, what you doing?”
Legs shaking; my main concern was Doreen coming in and seeing Mookie butt naked and me in my shorts in the bedroom.
Mookie tiptoed to the door and flattened his back against the wall. The hallway light shadowed half of his sweaty face. He looked at me and put a finger to his lips. He then got down on all fours and peeked around the corner.
Scrambling for my pants, I figured constipation had driven him crazy. Or someone was in the apartment.
I whispered, “Hey, man, what’s going on?” and put my pants on.
Mookie was on his stomach now, crawling out the room.
No gun, I looked around in search of a weapon. Nothing. Not even a pair of scissors. Moving quietly into the hallway I noticed Mookie’s clothes and tennis shoes in a heap on the bathroom floor. A strange smell coming from there, like burning plastic.
“Mookie?” I whispered. Except in the hallway and bathroom the apartment was pitch black. “Mookie, what’s going on, man?” I turned the living room light on and crossed to the front door. It was locked. What’s he doing…hiding?
He wasn’t in the kitchen, the storage closet. I called for him again and then decided to call the police, let them figure out what was going on here. I picked up the phone and before I could dial the number, Mookie, right behind me, whispered, “Yo, G, don’t do that.”
I jumped, but thankfully didn’t spaz out.
“They out there,” Mookie whispered. He stood in a crouch, as if he were playing football. “You need to turn that light off.”
“Who are they?” I whispered, not at all liking the way he was looking at me. Wide-eyed. Paranoid, as if he didn’t trust me.
Staring at me he backed up to the light switch on the wall and turned the light off.
In the dark I could still see that crazy look on his sweaty face, the small patch of curly hairs above his potbelly, and his package, which dispelled my belief that all fat boys were disadvantaged.
“Man, uh, you want me to take you somewhere? Somewhere safe? Put your clothes on, okay? I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”
He ignored all that, tiptoed to the front window, peeked out through the curtain.
“Go get you clothes,” I whispered. “Go get your clothes and put em on. I’ll take you--”
“You need to be quiet,” he said. Irritated.
This quelled my fear somewhat, made me hot. This guy in my apartment tiptoeing around naked like he paid the rent, telling me to be quiet. The more I thought about it, the hotter I got. But not hot enough to tell him to get his shit and get out.
I tried a different tack. “Mookie, who you think is out there?” Damn him, I could talk in my apartment whenever I felt like it.
I heard him sigh. “G, if you let them know I’m in here, you and I gonna have a complication. A serious complication.”
That was a threat if I’d ever heard one. That got me worried again. That prompted me to go into the kitchen and turn on the faucet to drown out noise opening a drawer and getting a butter knife out. I came back and sat down on the recliner, the knife tucked in the front of my pants. Mookie was still looking out the window.
Okay, Big Boy, bring it on!
Mookie finally moved away from the window and tiptoed into the kitchen as I gripped the knife under my shirt. I heard the shutters in the kitchen window over the sink.
Thirty or forty minutes later he came back to the living room window.
“Mookie,” I whispered, “I’m going back to bed.”
He didn’t have anything to say about that. I locked the bedroom door and tried to scoot the dresser over to block it. Couldn’t budge it. After sitting on the edge of the bed for a long while, listening for whatever that fool might be doing, I fell asleep, knife in hand.
When I woke up sunlight showed in the window. Laughter sounded from somewhere in the apartment. I knew that laugh anywhere. Doreen was back. The smell of sausage and eggs filled the apartment.
I found Doreen, Vida, and Lewis sitting at the kitchen table, eating breakfast.
“Where’s Mookie?”
“Right there,” Doreen said, and he stepped into view, fully clothed now, an apron on, holding a skillet in one hand, a spatula in the other.
That crazy look gone, he grinned at me. “G, how you like your eggs? Scrambled or over easy?”
“Scrambled,” I said. “No, over easy.”
“We had a helluva good time last night, didn’t we?” Mookie said. “We have to do that again, G.”
Chapter 4
Dokes covered his face with both hands. We were sitting near the pool in front of his apartment playing dominoes, the game halted because Dokes found the story about Mookie hilarious.
He stopped laughing to ask, “All those trips to the john you didn’t make him a crackhead?”
“No. This guy wasn’t dirty, skinny, bad teeth, none of that.”
“Dude, you talking Hollywood crackheads. Real-life crackheads go through a cycle--beginner, user, rock bottom.” He started laughing again. “Dude, where have you been? What did Doreen say?”
“I didn’t tell her all I told you. I told her he started acting strange when they left, then she tells me he’s a crackhead. You know I couldn’t tell her the guy started crawling around naked, peeking out windows and threatening me in my own apartment.”
Serious now, Dokes said, “That crack ain’t no joke. A guy I worked with, been there fifteen years, started smoking--job, wife, house, car, everything gone in a matter of weeks. Now he’s walking the streets, begging.”
&
nbsp; Two women wearing bikinis came through the gate and reclined in lawn chairs at the other end of the pool. Dokes didn’t give them a glance, but I couldn’t take my eyes off them.
“You wanna finish this game?” Dokes said.
I put down the double-five and said, “Fifteen.” Dokes looked at his dominoes, slammed down the blank-five and picked up five red chips, slid me three.
“I tried it one time,” Dokes said as I was eyeballing one of the women, the good-looking one wearing a charteuse-colored two-piece.
“You kidding me? How was it? What’s her name?”
“Stop gawking and play. Cocaine, I tried it one time.”
“You? Really? You put a pipe in your mouth?”
Dokes shook his head. “Not the pipe--I’m not crazy. This girl I was with--” I arched my eyes in disbelief. “You find it hard to believe, but I do date. I don’t feel a need to tell you when I do. Anyway, this girl and her friends were playing spades, I’m the only man there, and this one girl put a saucer on the table, scraped a few lines with a razor, passed it around. My turn I said, ‘No thanks, I’ll pass,’ and they started laughing. The second time I hit it…a little bit. Whose play is it?”
I put down the six-five. “What happened?”
Dokes studied his dominoes. “Nothing that made me want to try it again. Tongue got numbed, heart started racing, got a little lightheaded.” He put the double-six next to the six-five.
“Anybody but you, Dokes, I could believe it.”
“Believe it. Sorta scared me--it did scare me, scared the hell out of me. At home I couldn’t stop my nose bleeding. Heart beating like a engine, that’s what really scared me, didn’t like that at all. Peer pressure, dude, it’s real.” He looked over my head and said, “Don’t tell Doreen. She’s headed this way.”
Turning I saw Doreen walking through the gate, smiling, in red short pants, a yellow halter top, and blue flip-flops, her around-the-house clothes.
Dokes stood up and said, “Hey, Doreen. You’re looking beautiful as always.”
Baby Huey: A Cautionary Tale of Addiction Page 3