In the City of Shy Hunters (63 page)

Remember, Charlie?

Father spread-legged John Wayne, the black shadow of him pouring out onto the floor. Father's eyes straight into my eyes, unwinding the black bullwhip, laughing, his chest up, down, then up again.

Will! Mother said. My only son, my child, please!

The horrific whisper.

I beg you please, please! Mother said. Tell me the truth!

Your husband has been fucking your daughter for five years now, I said, And you know it. You buried Bobbie in the black dress, bitch. You've always known and you've never had the strength to stand up to Father, not really, not even when it came to saving your daughter's life. You betrayed Bobbie as you have betrayed me as you have betrayed yourself. So don't give me any of this Oh-my-only-son-tell-me-the-truth shit, I said. And, oh yeah, here's something else too. The truth you want to hear so badly.

Yes, Charlie fucked her. And I fucked her too, I said.

But it's not the truth.

Charlie's the father, I said.

Charlie jumped. You jumped up, Charlie.

The first lash of Father's bullwhip caught you around the waist, stopped you in your tracks. The second crack of the whip was vertical, a flip of his wrist down and then up and the leather snapped against your face and the cut went deep from under your eye through your upper lip.

You didn't flinch, Charlie. Not a tear, not a sound.

You never looked me in the eyes again.

Father's shadow and your blood on the straw and pigeon shit on the dusty barn floor.

This is what you said, Charlie. The words that hurt.

You Parkers, all of you, you said, Are haunted.

And just like that you were gone, into the night, down the back stairs, Charlie 2Moons out of my life, forever.

Forgive me, Charlie.

The moment that, after, you're different.

You, Charlie 2Moons.

Gone.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX

T
he message on my red answering machine was street noise and somebody breathing. True Shot? Rose? Fiona?

All at once a deep sexy voice.

William of Heaven! What a sweet name, honey! Can I borrow it? Just called to tell you I got a hard-on I'm saving just for you! Remember me? Crystal? We met one night in the meat-packing district. I'll bet you thought little Crystal forgot all about you, but she didn't.

Listen, honey, I never did find your friend 2Moons. I didn't find the Ruby guy either. But I did find a very large, very drunk 'skin named True Shot.

When he's awake, he insists his name is Peter Morales. But I tell you something. I never forget a face, especially his. And yours.

Anyway, he won't stop talking about you, and he's driving us fucking
mad
. Come pick him up, will you? Meet me on the corner of Eighth Avenue and Forty-third, this afternoon around four.

Love ya.

Mean it.

OUTSIDE
,
POURING RAIN
, whirling whirling big wind like to knock you over. I turned my ball cap back around so the bill could keep the rain off my face, turned the collar of the pea coat up, hunched my shoulders, head down, tried to bury my ears, but it was no use. Stuck my hands in my big pea coat pockets. My red Converse tennis shoes were wet in no time.

A Checker taxi pulled out from the corner of 42nd and Broadway, the back tires spinning, making a sound I thought at first was the wind, then some kind of Asian music, then the sound was somebody screaming, then I looked and it was the tires.

I walked to Eighth Avenue, my head down, just looking at my wet shoes. On Eighth Avenue, the gust of wind made me stop.

On 43rd Street, people were three deep on the avenue waving and screaming at the headlights coming at them, thousands of headlights coming at them, taxis splashing on by.

I stood under the next green awning I could find, at the deli on 43rd and Eighth, just for a moment. Took my ball cap off, beat my ball cap against my leg, put my ball cap back on. An Asian guy carrying a crate of oranges inside screamed at me, his language high-pitched and sour and spinning tires, and used the crate of oranges as a battering ram to push me back out into the street. Right then this truck goes by and throws a wave of New York City gutter water all over me, like some huge dragon piss, soaked.

On the neon-bright marquee were the red words
CHICKS WITH DICKS
.
PRIVATE BOOTHS
.
XXX
.

Four-ten.

Four-twenty.

Even my nuts were soaked.

Then a young man in a black stocking cap and a shiny pink parka walked up to me, stood too close.

Spare some change? he asked.

He was wearing black tights. On his feet, fuzzy gray slippers.

I was New York drop-dead fuck-you.

Love ya, he said. Mean it.

I turned quick, looked hard into his eyes, and inside in there was Crystal.

Crystal's lips were a boy's lips, no red life all their own. A bruise under his eye. When he smiled, his front two teeth were missing.

William of Heaven, Crystal said, You'd never make it on the street. It's all right to forget the dick, he said, But don't forget the face.

What happened to your face? I said.

Follow me, Crystal said.

Halfway down the block, on the right, I followed Crystal up the stoop. He shoved a plastic card between the doorjambs, and the door swung open hard. Narrow hallway, painted lemon yellow, unrelenting light. Seventeen steps to the second floor.

No lightbulbs on the second floor.

A smell of propane and something else.

Crystal pushed open a door without a lock.

The cold dark room was stripped down to the two-by-fours. No chairs, no table, no beds. The only light was a blowtorch burning blue in one of the double kitchen sinks. The other sink was full of needles, plastic things, a Roy Rogers bag of french fries. People everywhere on the floor, twenty or thirty of them. People up close to each other wrapped in blankets, coats, plastic bags, newspaper.

Somebody coughing hard the way Ruby used to.

Two candles. Hands, palms open, reaching for the flame.

He's over here, Crystal said.

The purple bumps on Crystal's wrist were big black raspberries in the blue blowtorch light.

True Shot was lying on the floor. He looked like a tree root or a half-frozen length of mud. Stringy long black hair and no shoes and dirty white socks. An empty bottle of Night Train lying next to his extra-lovely Wrangler jeans with the boot flare. No boots. His red corduroy shirt stained with something dark. Wine? Blood?

I was kneeling over him before I even knew it.

True Shot? I said.

I put my hand under his neck, lifted his head, put his head in my lap. Pulled the hair from his face. His skin was gray to green and he smelled something awful and I thought for sure he was dead, and then he coughed and threw up all over his shirt and down my leg.

We got to get you to a hospital, I said.

True Shot jabbed me with his elbow, jumped his huge dead bulk up, his bunched-up dirty white socks on the wood floor, fell over again, got back up on his knees, walked on his knees, fell flat.

No hospital! True Shot said. No hospital!

People yelling, running in the dark room through the arched doorway into the blowtorch blue of the kitchen. Big grotesque shadows on the walls.

Someone knocked a candle over. I quick picked the candle up.

True Shot was standing with his arms out like a man who couldn't see. I stepped one step toward True Shot and I felt a hand on my shoulder.

Easy, Crystal said. Take it easy, Papi.

The archway of blowtorch blue was a halo around Crystal's head.

Crystal stepped up close. His lips at my ear.

You got any money?

A little, I said.

True Shot was a buckled-knee vertical crawl. His head hit the floor hard.

How much? Crystal said.

Thirty dollars, I said. Maybe forty.

Give me twenty, Crystal said. You got two tens?

My hands were like Catholic statues in the light. The inside of my wallet, shadows of bills.

Crystal reached in my wallet, took two bills. He held one in each hand and held the bills like Dumbo ears next to his head.

Ten, Crystal said, And ten.

Let me look at those, I said.

Crystal dropped his hands, crumpled the bills into his fists.

Do you want your friend, Crystal said, Or not?

Crystal paid two big guys, a black guy and a brown guy, ten bucks each to carry True Shot down to the street.

Ten bucks in the house. Ten bucks on the street.

The black guy grabbed True Shot's arms. The brown guy grabbed True Shot's legs.

Into the arch of blowtorch blue light, through the dark door, down the narrow dark hallway, down the seventeen steps, into the unrelenting lemon yellow, out the front door, down seven steps of the stoop.

The black man and the brown man leaned True Shot against a lamp-post, and when they let go, True Shot's hair stuck to the lamppost, but True Shot started to slide.

Hold on a little longer! Crystal yelled.

The two men quick put their arms behind True Shot.

Just help us get him into a fucking cab! William of Heaven, Crystal said, Hail us a cab!

Crystal pulled a joint out of his pocket, lit it with a silver lighter, inhaled big.

Can I have some of that? I said.

Crystal kept sucking, and as he sucked he shook his head.

Then, in the gray exhale: This shit will kill you, he said. Now get us a cab, Crystal said.

I'll hold True Shot, I said. You hail the cab.

In your dreams, Crystal said. Get your white ass out there and get us a cab!

A CAB FINALLY
stopped, I opened the door, and when the cabdriver saw the extra-lovely dead-drunk True Shot, he threw the car in gear and started off.

But Crystal was standing in front of the cab screaming, his arms in the air: Evita.

The headlights on Crystal were spotlights. Crystal was the host of the cabaret.

The black guy stepped around to the driver's door.

The brown guy and I got our shoulders underneath True Shot's arms, lifted, and when we got to the cab door, we looked at each other and just let True Shot fall, like a large bag of potatoes, into the backseat of the cab. We folded his legs up and closed the door.

I got in next to the cabbie. He looked Armenian, and there was sweat running down his forehead.

I rolled down the window. In the mercury-vapor light, Crystal was brown-gray-purple.

Now, Crystal said, Give us a kiss.

I leaned up and out and kissed Crystal on the cheek, just below the purple bump.

Crystal, I said, Thank you. What can I do for you?

The wind blew hard just then, and a
New York Post
scraped along the sidewalk.

Crystal was sucking on the joint again, a Lakota Sioux James Dean.

Just come back and see us sometime, Crystal said.

As he spoke the smoke in him came out his nose, and he laughed a quick up-and-down of the chest, and then he coughed, and coughed, and coughed.

THE CABDRIVER
wasn't Armenian. He was part Greek and part Moroccan and his friends called him Jusef. He lived in Queens with his grandmother, his mother, his wife, his sisters, and a granddaughter.

When I tipped him ten dollars, Jusef offered to help me get True Shot out of his cab.

It wasn't pretty. True Shot had gone shit spray. And it was just Jusef and me, pulling and shoving True Shot out of the back door, the same way True Shot and I had pulled and shoved Ruby out of the basement.

The eleven steps up the stoop were the hardest. Just me and True Shot and the cold wind. One step. One step. One step.

Inside my apartment, I laid True Shot on the floor next to the futon.

My Art Family were all dressed in Halloween costumes: a clown, a queen, a sailor, a cowboy, and an Indian.

True Shot stank even worse inside, so I got his red corduroy shirt
off
and his Wranglers, his socks, and his stretched-out shit-stained gray-brown Fruit of the Looms. I tried to undo the knot on the buckskin strand the beaded-blue horizontal and the red-beaded vertical buckskin bag hung from, but the knot was tied too tight.

I opened all the windows.

In a garbage can outside, I dumped his clothes.

I filled a pan with hot water and got a washrag and a bar of Ivory soap and started scrubbing. True Shot's skin was turning back to cinnamon brown inside in the heat. I washed his face, the big brow hanging over his eyes, his delicate eyelids, down the sides of his long nose, his cheekbones, above the curve of his lips; washed his lips, his chin. Held his head up and washed underneath the buckskin bag with the blue-beaded horizontal and the beaded red vertical. Washed his arms, under his arms, his big hands, and long fingers. The fingernails so beautifully oval. All his silver rings were gone.

I washed down his chest, his extra-lovely nipples. Washed his extra-lovely belly and down to his privates. Washed everything extra-lovely down there too. A grower, not a shower. Anteater. Washed down his legs, his feet, his toes.

I got him rolled over. Washed his shoulders, his back, his butt, down inside the nasty shit-spray butt crack, down his legs.

I turned him over again and lifted True Shot up from his waist, put my legs under him, scooted the pan of water closer, and put the pan under his head.

When I put the Herbal Essence shampoo on his head and started scrubbing, True Shot opened his eyes. I'd never been that close to him before, looking into the jade-green Saint Vitus' dance of his eyes.

I smiled. Stopped smiling.

True Shot hit me with his open palm, hard in the chest, stood up, weaved around, knocked the pan of water over, and crashed into my Art Family, knocking them every which way.

Apartment Cauchemar.

True Shot! I yelled. Lie down! You're sick!

True Shot kept stumbling around, shampoo dripping into his face and eyes. He fell against the east wall, then against the west wall. True Shot bouncing off the walls.