by Robert Stone
“You must be a terrific writer,” she said.
Hicks and Eddie Peace huddled against the dark wall of the last bungalow. Eddie hugged his shoulders, his back to the wind.
“Ridiculous,” Hicks said. “Ridiculous bullshit.”
“I thought you’d be amused for Christ’s sake.”
“Amused?” Hicks shivered. “You got a lot of nerve. What happened to the Englishman?”
“I got news for you,” Eddie said, “your shit has a bad rap.”
“Then there’s a misunderstanding.”
“I don’t think so,” Eddie said.
Hicks ran a hand over his hair.
“Then get those assholes out of here.” Eddie shook his head in impatience.
“You don’t understand, Raymond, that’s the misunderstanding. You don’t know how things work here. This guy has just been paid an absurd figure. His wife is an heiress. I tell you these people have no conception of money.”
“You’re the con man,” Hicks said, “not me. I’ve got quality shit to sell—why do I want this insanity?”
“Raymond,” Eddie said, “Raymond, try and learn something. I deliver this goof into your hands.” He reached out, took Hicks’ right hand and squeezed it. “He’s a nice fella. He’s very polite.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Then you’re stupid, Raymond. I tell you your shit is a no-no around here. I’ll give you six thousand for what you can give me. And with a little imagination you can screw Gerald for a lot more. Listen, it would wipe you out what I’ve got working with those two. The guy is scared shitless—even if he doesn’t know it yet. He’s gotta be discreet.”
“You’ll give me what?” Hicks said. “What’s that figure again?” He put his hand on Eddie’s shoulder.
“You just take it easy,” Eddie said.
“Man, I’ll burn it before I take a fucking like this.”
Eddie twisted slightly to dislodge Hicks’ hand from his person. Hicks seized the leather and held him.
“You’ll take a fucking like you wouldn’t believe if you don’t get hip, Raymond. I’m warning you.”
“You’re doing me,” Hicks said. He pulled Eddie toward him.
“Take your hand off me, Raymond.”
“You’re doing me.”
His teeth clenched, Eddie Peace struck Hicks in the stomach with the points of his fingers. Hicks released him surprised.
“Take your hands off me, cocksucker.”
To Hicks’ utter astonishment, Eddie slapped him twice across the face.
“You nickel and dime asshole—don’t you dare threaten me with violence.” Eddie thrust his chin upward and pushed Hicks backward. “You’re way out of your league, Jack. You’re not selling grass to college girls down here. You and that bitch can get offed on account of that shit. For Christ’s sake, you big creep I’m doing you a favor.”
A one-man Mutt and Jeff routine, Hicks thought, stepping back to let him work. He had balls and audacity, without question.
“I can lay this off for you, stupid. Nobody else can.”
Eddie had balls and audacity and he was not basically rash. He was operating in midair—but he held the superior position and it was not unreasonable that he dare to assert it. His trouble, Hicks thought, was that he was too much of an optimist, like all hustlers. And for all his imagination, he was not a good judge of character on limited acquaintance.
He rubbed his cheek where Eddie’s first blow had fallen. The sound of it rang in his soul like a mantra.
“You’re too vain, Eddie,” Hicks said.
A faint caution troubled Eddie’s eyes—only for a moment.
“You think so, huh?”
“You don’t have the bread.”
Eddie smiled.
“Sure I got it. When we’re finished here we’ll take a ride and do some business.”
“Finished what, for Christ’s sake?”
Eddie shrugged in mock despair.
“We’re turning Gerald on, Raymond. We’re showing him how it is. And he’s gonna do us a few favors because he’s a nice cat and we’re gonna make him scared.”
“How?”
“How? We’re gonna put you in his life. Then he’s gonna want everything back like it was when he didn’t know nothing.” He patted Hicks’ arm in a friendly fashion. “You’ll make out fine. Look at the bright side.”
Hicks began to laugh.
Eddie grinned happily.
“You’re smiling. You like it.”
“Sure,” Hicks said. “Anything you want.”
Eddie and Hicks returned while Jody was explaining to Marge that she, Jody, was fundamentally a revolutionary and that if Gerald was not fundamentally a revolutionary at the moment, she considered it likely that he soon would be. Hicks was so tense that Marge was aware of his body’s rigidity when he sat down on the bed beside her. His right hand rested on his knee; the discolored palm opened and closed as he stretched his corpse-white fingers. When she looked at his face, it struck her that in some curious way he had come to resemble Eddie Peace and after a moment she realized that it was his smile. He was wearing Eddie’s smile in some private mockery. When he turned it on her, she took it for a signal the significance of which she could not understand.
“Everybody makes out,” Eddie told them.
Jody studied him for a moment and giggled, a hand to her mouth.
“Ed is my absolute picture of an operator. Look at him.”
Everyone looked at Eddie Peace.
“Mine too,” Hicks said.
“Raymond is the operator,” Eddie said softly, “not me. He’s the original hip guy. The whole world is goofs to him.”
“What’s that like?” Gerald asked. He had begun to enjoy himself.
Hicks walked over and took the bottle from his hand without looking at him.
Eddie Peace watched him.
“What’s it like, Raymond?”
Hicks closed his eyes for a moment, drank some bourbon, and gave Eddie Peace his own smile.
“I don’t know what it’s like, Eddie.”
Marge leaned against him and felt him trembling.
“What are we doing here?” she asked. “Are we going to do up or what?”
Eddie came over to pat her on the head.
“Mar-gee wants her smack-ee.”
“Please,” Marge said. “Really.”
Eddie laughed.
“I already asked ya if you was a schoolteacher, didn’ I?”
“Yes, you did,” she said.
Eddie clapped his hands.
“C’mon, c’mon, Raymond. It’s all you. Where’s this famous shit?”
The bleached fingers shook slightly as he opened the bag. His Eddie Peace smile was an uninhabited rictus. Marge grew frightened of him.
When the dope was out everyone regarded it with silent respect. Gerald and Jody stood to see it.
“Well, O.K., there, Mr. Hicks,” Eddie said. “Let’s try it on.”
Since their arrival, Marge had been trying to decide whether she would do up with them. The fact that there seemed to be a decision involved encouraged her to pass; with the stuff laid out before her like a midnight picnic, her faint resolve wavered.
So far as she could tell, she felt ail right. Perhaps it had been just nerves the last time, nerves and the lack of dilaudid. If she declined, Eddie Peace would be irritated and confused and that made it almost worthwhile. On the other hand, it was all such a drag, so scary and depressing and the high was so righteous and serene. She never thought about Janey when she was high.
“You want to go first?” Eddie asked her gently. She glanced at Hicks and it seemed to her that he shook his head almost imperceptibly. It was probably imagination, she thought, she could not read him at all that night.
“You go ahead. I’ll think about it.”
Eddie smiled.
“Yeah, you do that, Margie.” He looked about the room. “I’ll go first. Because it’s
my party.”
Hicks bowed his head in deference, the terrible smile still in place.
“Your works or mine, Eddie?”
“Mine,” Eddie said. “They’re new.”
His works were new, a regulation syringe, without improvisations. He had cotton and a jar of surgical alcohol. Hollywood.
“Now that’s what I call narcotics paraphernalia,” Hicks said.
“I got better than that,” Eddie said. “I got coke to run with it. I don’t go for that nowhere noddy feeling.”
“I do,” Marge said.
“Sure you do. You’re a broad.”
He assembled the needle and admired its luster. Jody watched him.
“But is Ed an addict?” she asked her husband. “I didn’t know Ed was an addict.”
Gerald looked puzzled.
“Ed’s an addict,” Hicks said. “Ain’t you, Ed?”
Nothing could spoil Eddie’s mood.
“None of your fucking business,” he said good-naturedly.
Hicks took the cap from his Wild Turkey bottle, rinsed it out in the sink—and with his baker’s measuring spoon—poured in what he judged to be the fifth part—a nickel bag. Eddie followed him about, watching over his shoulder.
“That’s enough?”
“You’ll find out.”
“It’s that good?” He took the cap and looked into it. “And we do it aged in oak.”
There was a pool of water in the bottom of the sink. Hicks drew up enough to fill the dropper and transferred it to the cap in three measures.
“Gerald,” Eddie said. “C’mon Gerald, social significance time. We’re gonna cook up here.”
He held the cap with an alligator roach clip, they cooked up with his propane lighter. When the heroin began to melt, he produced a tiny make-up box and spooned an edge of his cocaine from it into the mix.
“Aged in oak and cut with coke, Gerald.”
Gerald nodded as a man will who has spent much time being shown things.
“Aged in oak and cut with coke and bless my soul,” Eddie said.
He took the works from Hicks’ hand and loaded his shot.
“Cheers,” he told them.
He tied up with the red bandana and went into the big vein. When he shot, a burst of bright color rose in the valve and a liquor of blood and melted heroin spread across the pure glass surface in delicate butterfly patterns. When he took the needle out he ran a swab across his arm and over the point of the spike.
“Aw shit,” he said tenderly, moved to emotion.
After a minute or so, he stamped his feet.
“Ai yai!” He grinned furiously at the people in the room. “Ai chihuahua.”
Jody watched him with an expression of incredulity and delight.
“Is it Mexican?” she asked.
“Is it Mexican?” Eddie cried. “Bless your heart!”
Everyone laughed except Gerald. Hicks’ laughter was his Eddie Peace smile expanded in a spasm.
“She asks me if it’s Mexican!” Eddie roared. His hilarity was boundless. “Outasight!”
Jody was nearly beside herself.
“Who’s next.”
“Who’s next, Marge?” Eddie asked.
Marge shrugged.
“I don’t care. I’m still thinking about it.”
“What about me?” Jody demanded.
“Gotta be you,” Eddie said. There was a little bit of spittle on his lip and he wiped it away. “Gotta be you. Stone the gash.”
“Did you want to go first?” Jody asked her husband.
“Maybe I ought to,” Gerald said.
“I don’t see why. But you can if you want to.”
“No,” Gerald said. “No. There’s no reason you shouldn’t.”
“Stone the gash,” Eddie Peace said.
Jody offered her arm manfully. Eddie held it and turned to Hicks.
“I gotta say, Raymond. . . . I gotta say . . .”
“Glad you like it, Eddie.”
He looked down at Jody’s arm and shoved it away.
“I don’t want that,” he declared. “Gimme some leg.”
“Some leg?” Jody asked.
“He wants to put it in your leg,” Gerald explained, “instead of the vein.”
“Somewhere nice,” Eddie said. “C’mon Gerald, tell her take her pants down.”
Gerald stood up uncertainly, as though he thought he might be useful.
Jody unbuckled her brand new leather belt and peeled the fawn colored cloth down her left hip to expose an area of skin below the margin of her panties. She blushed charmingly and held her trousers up with her right hand. She looked at her husband while Eddie shot her and did not flinch.
“O.K., Jody,” Eddie said, patting her on the rump. “You’re fixed.” She walked away looking thoughtful and sat down on the floor beside her husband. For a moment they held hands and looked at each other.
“Raymond,” Eddie said, “take care of Gerald. I want to goof.” He began walking up and down in the middle of the room, silently mouthing a song of his imagining. Goofing.
Hicks measured and cooked up again.
Gerald took the chair where Jody had been sitting; he sat erect and grim, with the air of a man about to do something valorous in a good cause. When he looked at Hicks, his eyes held humility and trust.
“Shall I take my pants down,” he asked.
“You don’t have to,” Hicks said.
Hicks drew up the liquor, pink with blood and lined up the spike with Gerald’s bare arm.
Eddie stopped goofing for a moment to watch.
“Hey, Raymond, don’t hit him in the vein, man.”
“No,” Hicks said.
Jody tried to stand up.
“Oh my God,” she said softly.
“Isn’t that the vein?” Gerald asked. At the last moment, he tried to pull his arm away. Hicks held his wrist and pushed the shot home.
“What are you doing?” Eddie asked. He was still smiling. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Gerald’s eyes opened in astonishment. His feet made a quick convulsive shuffle. When he fell sideways, the needle went with his arm.
Marge stood up in terror.
“No,” Eddie said. “You crazy cocksucker . . .!”
Jody took a step toward the bathroom and vomited on the tile. She was trying to scream.
Eddie Peace stared down at Gerald and then at Hicks. The smile had not completely disappeared even then and it seemed that at the core of his amazed stare there was some grain of admiration. Eddie was a true joker.
Slumped in the bathroom doorway, Jody was trying to make sense of what she saw.
“Please,” she said to Eddie Peace.
Marge sprang forward and bent over Gerald. She could not tell if he was alive or not. It would be shock at the very least. She remembered something about salt.
“Salt,” she said. “What about salt?”
She looked up and saw that Hicks had thrown Eddie against the window. That had been the signal, the meaning of the smile.
“Hustle now, creep,” Hicks told Eddie. “Let me see you hustle now.”
Jody kept saying “please,” and retching.
“What have you done?” Eddie asked sadly. “What have you done?”
Marge started for the door with an idea of obtaining salt. Borrowing it from a neighbor. A cup of salt for an OD.
Hicks grabbed her. He was holding the backpack.
“There ain’t no salt,” he said. “Get your gear.”
She could not get past him.
“Why?” she asked him in a whisper. “Why in the name of God?”
“Get your gear,” he told her and stepped around her. He was pointing the gun at Eddie Peace.
“Look what you done to him,” Eddie said. “Look at him.”
Jody, deathly pale, knelt over her husband, rocking on her knees.
“You’re too vain, Eddie,” Hicks said. “You’re too small to take a joke.”
�
��No,” Eddie said, “you’re wrong. I can dig it.”
“I liked the look on your face when I hit him.”
“I liked the look on his face,” Eddie said.
“What are you gonna do, hustler?”
Eddie shook his head, vexedly.
“I don’t know, Raymond.”
“You understand, don’t you, buddy? It was unacceptable.”
Eddie smiled faintly and shrugged.
“What can I say, Raymond?”
Marge stopped gathering her things and looked down at Gerald. There was foam or mucus around his mouth.
“Isn’t anybody going to try . . .”
“C’mon,” Hicks said. “Hurry it up.”
Jody still knelt, gagging, beside her husband. She looked up at them in stoned terror and tried to stand.
“Is there salt?” she asked.
“Not today,” Eddie said.
She made an ineffectual lunge toward the door; Eddie caught her easily and pulled her to him.
Hicks looked straight ahead as they walked to the Land-Rover. Marge trailed behind him with an armful of hastily gathered clothing. The football player was at his desk in the motel office and it seemed to Marge that he must have heard their carrying on—but as they passed he never turned his head or looked up from whatever he was reading. The house had been paid in advance.
As they climbed into the Land-Rover, the door of the bungalow opened and Jody’s struggling silhouette appeared for a moment in the doorway. Eddie pulled her back inside.
“It’s gonna be a long night for Eddie Peace,” he said, when they were on the road. His face looked as bloodless as his hands. As he drove, his cold gray eyes roamed the night outside, their scanning was like some process from the ocean floor.
Marge was crying again.
“I can’t hack it,” she explained. “It’s too much.”
“You’re doing fine.”
They followed the coast highway south past Santa Monica and the arcades of Venice.
“So why Gerald?”
“Because he’s a Martian. They’re all Martians.”
“What are you?”
“I’m a Christian American who fought for my flag. I don’t take shit from Martians.”
“My God,” Marge said, trying to keep the tears out of her voice, “you killed the man.”
“Maybe.”
“He was just a jerk with a dumb idea.” She stared at the merciless eyes, trying to see him again, trying to make him be there. “The same as us.”