Fag Hag (Robert Rodi Essentials) (19 page)

“Oh, Quen, no,” said Lawanda; she was almost hyperventilating.

“You don’t have a job, right?” asked Natalie as they drove under the Pulaski exit sign. The city skyline was before them now, lit up against the setting sun, majestic and faintly terrifying.

“Ah, shit, who gon’ give a ex-Rama Z a job?” he said, naming a particularly virulent north side gang. “Who are gon’ give a paycheck to a niggah wif a record?”

Natalie was struck by an idea that almost made her drive off the road. “You know guns, Quentin, right?”

“Shit if I don’t know gun.”

“You own any?”

He shook his head. “Handled plenty.”

“You want to work in a gun shop?”

He laughed. “Last place anybody ever hire
me.
I were Rama Z, man! I marked for life, knowhumsayin’?”

She cocked an eyebrow. “You read much, Quentin?”

“I can read,” he said defensively.

“But
do
you?”

“Who got time?” He looked ahead of him, as if closing off this avenue of inquiry.

Natalie took the ramp from the Eisenhower onto the Dan Ryan Expressway; it was a metaphor for her thinking—she was steering them all onto a whole new plane. “Do you know who Ayn Rand is?”

“No.”

“Quentin, if I told you that reading a book by Ayn Rand might get you a job, would you read it?”

He shrugged. “I guess.”

“It’s a long book. Couple hundred pages.”

He seemed undaunted. “I just gots to read it? Thassall? Then I get a job in a gun shop? A
gun shop?”

She shrugged. “Well, you can’t
just
read it. You have to believe in it. And you have to convince the owner of the shop you believe in it. You have to make him think that book changed your life.”

He smirked. “Kinda chump gon’ b’lieve that?”

“This chump will. Trust me.”

“Where I get this book?”

She swung off at the first exit. “We’ll pick up a copy now. Start reading it tonight and don’t stop till your finished. And by next week, you’ll have a job.”

Quentin looked at Lawanda, then back at Natalie, then back at the road. “Shit if that happen,” he said.

L
AWANDA AND
Q
UENTIN
lived in a housing project on Clybourn Street, just north of Cabrini Green, the city’s most notorious public-housing failure. Natalie was surprised to see how close it was to the trendy River North shops and restaurants she once frequented. If she’d known of its proximity, she’d have been a little less keen on wandering the neighborhood at night, drunk, with Peter.

The couple’s building rose about twelve stories high, but looked as though Natalie could bring it all down with just a few swift kicks. It was slate-gray and streaked with grime, and its windows all stood open, giving it a burned-out, desolate look. It wouldn’t have been out of place in the worst sections of Belfast, or Beirut.

Quentin hopped out and held the door for Lawanda. “Thank you for the ride, Natalie,” she said.

“Don’t mention it.”

She smootherd her skirt and said, “I hope you don’t mind if I don’t aks you up.”

“No, I understand. It’s pretty late, and all.”

“Well, and the elevator broke.”

She frowned. “Then how will you get to your apartment?”

“Oh, we can take the stair. But it ain’t a good idea for a white lady to do that.”

Natalie felt an urge to flinch, but quelled it. “Well—all right then. So long. You read that book, now,” she admonished Quentin.

He held up the copy of
The Fountainhead
she’d just bought for him, and gave it a few bounces in his palm, as though still incredulous at its weight.
“All
of it?” he asked, a slight whine in his voice.

“It’ll get you the job. Just keep telling yourself that, if the going gets tough.”

As she pulled onto Clybourn again and drove away, she thought about Darnita growing up in that awful environment. The child might be something of a monster, but this place would squash her like a bug—kill her ambition and leave her defeated before she was ten.

Better not to think about. Instead, she tried to conjure up a way she might use Quentin to her advantage once he started working for Lloyd.

“A
RE YOU READING
it, Quentin?” she asked him.

“Man, what you call me for? I say I read it, I will.”

“Are you reading it
now,
Quentin?”

“You never tell me this writer a woman. What I need to read some old white bitch for?”

“If you want the job, you’ll read the old white bitch.”

“I gots to go.”

“Read
it, Quentin.”

“Read it, my ass.” He hung up. But she knew he would. It was his only lifeline.

An hour later Natalie’s doorbell rang. She knew it could only be Curtis, so she buzzed him in, then went to the door and held it open for him. She detected an odor of decaying banana somewhere in the door’s vicinity, and made a mental note to try and track it down later.

Half a minute later, Curtis entered the apartment and made a face. “Hell happened here?”

She shut the door behind him. “What do you mean?”

“You look like hell, place looks like hell.” He kicked aside a greasy Wendy’s bag.

She bristled. “I don’t have a lot of time to clean.” She motioned him to follow her into the living room. “Come on, come on!”

She’d stacked the receiver and the tape deck on her coffee table. “There they are. You can take them and leave.”

He picked them up, wobbling slightly under their weight. “Where’s the bug?”

She went white. “What?”

“The bug, Natalie. It’s not here that I can see.”

She sat down. “You need that back, too?”

He stared at her for a moment, then put the equipment back on the table. “I need that back most of all. You mean you don’t have it?”

She shook her head. “I thought you just meant this.” She gestured at the equipment.

He rubbed the bridge of his nose as though summoning up patience.
“This
is nothing. The bug is the important thing. How soon can you get it to me?”

“God, Curtis—it’s still in Peter’s house! What did you expect?”

He gave her a what-me? look and said, “Well, girl, you’re gonna have to get it back.”

“I can’t do that!” She put her hands on her face. “Christ, I haven’t even
spoken
to Peter in months!”

He sat down across from her and looked at her gravely. “You
better
get that bug back, Natalie. This ain’t nursery school. We bribed a cop to get you that equipment; it was being held for a hearing in criminal court. You don’t get it back, the heat’s on him, and if the heat’s on him, the heat’s on you, only worse. They’ll come down on you hard, girl. The police force don’t go easy on cops who take bribes; and no cop is gonna take a fall ‘cause you’re afraid to talk to your old boyfriend. These guys play hardball. They don’t fuck around.”

She shot to her feet and started pacing the room. Cold sweat bathed her forehead. “But you’ve got a cop for a lover right? That’s how come we could do this in the first place. Can’t you work it out with him?”

“I
had
a cop for a lover. I’m through with that motherfucker. I’m not even speaking to him anymore. He had to send me a telegram to tell me he needs this shit back, ‘cause I kept hanging up on him.”

“What’s his name? I’ll talk to him myself.” Her breath was coming hard now; she could taste blood on her tongue. This was real anxiety.

Curtis raised an eyebrow and sighed. “Okay. I’ll leave it up to you two. Nothing to do with me anyway, and I’d just as well be out of it.” He took a pen from his pocket and started writing on a partially soiled Burger King napkin he found lying on the coffee table. “Name’s Luigi Gianelli. This is his home number. But don’t think you can charm this cat with your big baby blues, honey. He’s no fool. And he’s a real asshole, too. You don’t get to be a gay guy on the Chicago Police Force without being one hard-assed son of a bitch.” He got up, leaving the receiver and the tape deck behind. “As of now, he’s your problem. Far as I’m concerned, fucker’s
history.”
And with that, he left the apartment.

Natalie clutched her hand to her forehead. She thought she might faint. She picked up her phone and dialed Luigi Gianelli’s number. It rang once—twice—three times. She paced the room, her heart pounding.

After the fourth ring, an answering machine kicked in. “This is Gianelli,” a gruff voice snarled. “I’m not in. Leave a message.”

The shrill electronic tone sounded almost lilting by comparison. Natalie panicked and hung up.

Jesus,
she thought;
that guy sounds like he could eat me raw.

T
WO DAYS PASSED
before Natalie got up the nerve to call him again. This time he was home.

“Gianelli,” he said. It sounded like an accusation.

“Officer Gianelli, this is Natalie Stathis.”

“Who?”

“Curtis’s friend.” She paused. “The one who—uh—borrowed—well, you know…”

A long silence. Then, “Uh-huh.”

“I thought maybe we could meet.”

An even longer silence. “Uh-huh.”

“Friday night, bar of your choice?”

He didn’t respond; what was going on here?

“Roscoe’s, say?”

The longest silence yet. “Uh-huh.”

“I’ll be wearing a bright red sweatshirt, so you can’t miss me. I’m sure we can work something out then. ‘Bye!”

She didn’t wait for him to answer, but hung up at once, then sat hugging herself. God, was
that
a creepy experience.

Suddenly her ceiling seemed higher, and the walls farther away, and she felt dwarfed by the enormity of her difficulties and her danger. All she’d wanted was to ruin Peter and Lloyd’s life together; it had seemed so simple. She certainly hadn’t counted on ruining her own. But she’d been abandoned by her only ally—abandoned to the mercy of a Chicago cop gone bad!—and there was no one to help or even console her; she was utterly alone, and frightened.

And her day of judgment was swiftly approaching. How fitting that it should take place in a gay bar.

A
DAY LATER
, her spirit improved thanks to a phone call from Quentin.

“I gots the job,” he said.

Natalie leapt into the air. “Wonderful!”

“I didn’t even has to meet him,” the boy enthused. “He hire me just from talkin’ on the phone!”

“You didn’t mention me, did you?”

“No, you tell me not to.”

He had interrupted her dinner—peanut butter out of a spoon. She took another mouthful and asked, with rather thicker consonants than usual, “What did you say to him?”

“You eatin’?”

“Yes. What did you say to him?”

“Peanut butter?”

“Yes. What did you say to him?”

“Man, I be good at guessin’ food.”

“Quentin,
what did you say to him?”

“Well, he aks me how did I hear about the job and I say a friend have tell me, then he aks how do your friend know about it and I say I don’t know. Then he aks my background and I says, I gots to be honest wif you, I were Rama Z, but I have get out of it now and I wants a second chance. An’ I can tell he a little bit hesitation, but I go on and say, I knows gun, man, I knows ‘em, but I isn’t diresponsible wif ‘em, so you can trust me. I think serious about gun, they important. Then I goes on a bit like you tells me about the Bill of Right, and how it are important to be a free innavidual who are free to choose, like Howard Roark in
The Fountainhead.
And right away Mr. Hood get all excitement and say, oh, yeah read that book?”

Natalie laughed out loud. “I knew it!”

‘So I say yeah, that book change my life. That book get me outta Rama Z and give me a new direction.”

“Wonderful. This is wonderful.”

“Thing is, I only read the first forty page so far. I just bullshit him from that. You think I gots to finish that book, serious, Natalie? Thassa awful long book.”

“Absolutely. He’s sure to bring it up again. Remember, I said read it and
believe
in it. What happened next?”

“We talk about it for a while, then he tell me he need someone like me workin’ his shop, he not even gonna talk to no one else till he meet me, and I say, oh so I gots a innaview. He say no you gots the job, if you wants it, come and make sure. Man, thassa standup dude, Natalie.”

“Oh, he’s one of a kind.”

“He earn my respeck. I ain’t bullshit.”

“Listen, Quentin,” she said, lowering her voice, “I got you this job. I found it for you and told you how to nail it. Isn’t that right?”

“Yeah.” He sounded suddenly suspicious.

“Now, where would you be without that job?”

“Up shit creek.”

“So you owe me a favor now, don’t you? A big one.”

He pause. “I guess.”

“Not ‘I guess’—you do.”

“Okay. What you wants from me?”

“I don’t know yet. It might be something you have to hide from Mr. Hood.”

A short pause. “Fuck that shit.”

“Quentin.
You owe me.”

He sighed. “You tell me what you wants when you have figure it out and then we talk, okay?”

“Okay. And congratulations to you.”

“Congratulation my ass.”

She hung up, her mind whirling. She felt so alive that she ordered a pizza and ate the whole thing—more solid food than she’d managed to keep down all month.

N
ATALIE HADN
’
T BEEN
to Roscoe’s in ages, and now it seemed that all the faces there were new. What have caused that? Surely AIDS couldn’t have felled an entire bar’s worth of men so quickly—although there had been times in the past when she’d thought that grisly disease unstoppable.

No, it was more likely that her crowd of familiars had found a newer, fresher, more exciting watering hole, and moved on—or simply paired off and become homebodies, like Peter and Lloyd. She felt ancient at the thought, a relic of another age. But in the end, she had to admit that it suited her. She couldn’t bear the thought of even one of her old friends seeing her like this. She’d tried to rally, to pull body and soul together to resemble her old self, but she still looked like a shell of the woman she used to be. Her hair was dull, her eyes duller, and her clothes hung off her like the spare skin on a Shar-Pei. The mask of makeup she’d applied only made her look sorrier than ever—a scrawny Christmas tree with too many ornaments.