God Hates Us All (4 page)

But again, it never came to that. At the end of the shift—a closet traditionalist, the Pontiff broke up the workweek into five eight-hour stints—the Face and the Middleman met for a final bump. This time it was cash that changed hands—the day’s take minus the daily wage, which for me was $80.

It may not have been a foolproof scheme, but as long as no one acted like a fool, it might as well have been. Or so said the Pontiff, who promoted his business with a cheekiness bordering on the absurd—not even his most addled customers could forget the toll-free number he provided to them: 1-212-GET-WEED.

My new job.

“I’m a drug dealer, Tana. No one wants to hang out with their drug dealer.”

“Good point,” she concedes, curling into another yoga position. “I guess you’re destined to be friendless and alone, except for me.”

“You’re going back to school.”

“You could always get arrested. Three words for you: Hot. Prison. Sex.”

“Don’t think I haven’t considered it,” I say, sliding off the desk. “Speaking of work …” I toss her a gentleman’s quarter. She opens it and inhales the bouquet. “For your uncle Marvin. Don’t pinch too much.”

“Uh, I’m leaving tomorrow morning? I’m not exactly going to see him before I go.”

“Then give it back.”

Tana’s face goes pouty. “You don’t even like weed,” I say.

“I don’t. Usually. But Glenn said something about wanting to get high….”

“Why didn’t you say so? Consider it my donation to your erotic well-being. I’ll get Marvin another bag.”

“You see that?” she says, slipping the grass into her makeup bag. “That, my friend, is good karma. You just sit back and watch. The universe is going to reward you.”

NOT MEETING PEOPLE ISN’T THE ONLY THING standing between me and a social life. There’s also the fact that I’m still living at home.

My parents drove to Niagara Falls to pick me up from the hospital. We returned home in relative silence, which was fine by me; at least there weren’t any questions about Daphne. By the time we were pulled into the driveway, I’d decided that I could tolerate a week or two under their roof. Just enough time to get me back into the game.

But what game? As my wounds healed and my restlessness grew, I made two disturbing discoveries: (1) the U wasn’t in any hurry to take me back, given how badly I’d slacked off during my last semester there; and (2) I was an untouchable, at least as far as Nassau County’s food service industry was concerned. The events at Hempstead had turned me into a local celebrity. And while many free drinks flowed my way,
the job offers did not. Only my old boss at Carvel, where I worked my senior year in high school, took mercy on me when I agreed to work for minimum wage. Which wasn’t going to rent me living quarters that didn’t have the name “Projects” attached to it.

I quit Carvel the night I returned from my orientation with Rico. In a couple of weeks, I’ll have enough saved up to find a place of my own. Maybe even in the city, like I’d boasted to Marvin.

But I need a story to tell my parents. Too risky to lie about a restaurant job—the city’s close enough for a surprise visit. I decide to tell them I’ve found steady work as an office temp. Which means smiling a lot while my mother, bursting with joy at her newfound ability to use “my son” and “office” in the same sentence, drags me to the mall and forces a whole new wardrobe upon me. And she wakes up early Monday morning to make me breakfast, meaning I damn well have to wear it. I’m pretty sure I will be the only weed dealer in the tristate area rocking business-casual.

By the time I get to the city for my first day flying solo, the pager’s already buzzing. “Pick-Up’s at the Fifty-Ninth Street Station, near the newsstand. Meet-Up is at the Engineers’ Gate, Ninetieth and Fifth Avenue. Young lady. Look for Lycra.”

I think I’m going to like this job.

The problem, when I get to the gate, is an embarrassment of riches. Every third or fourth person is a woman under
thirty wearing Lycra, Upper East Side runners toning their glutes on the loop around the Central Park Reservoir. My eyes finally settle on the one who isn’t running.

She’s a few years older than me, maybe twenty-six or twenty-seven. Fair skin, short blonde hair, and breasts that, while not huge, still demand attention. Expensive running shoes. Maybe a young lawyer. A kept wife. The schoolteacher-daughter of some captain of industry.

In any case, my first customer.

“Are you him?” she asks.

“I hope so,” I reply, making a mental note to thank my mother for getting me out of the house in something other than jeans and a T-shirt.

“You don’t look like a drug dealer.”

“Who said I was a drug dealer?” Never admit you’re a dealer, Rico had warned me. You let them establish intent to sell, and you might as well be handing them the keys to your cell.

She sighs. “No, no, yes, no, yes.”

“What’s that?”

“The answers to the questions you’re about to ask me.”

“You’ve done this before.”

“Yes,” she says, bouncing impatiently on her toes. “Have you?”

“Can you tell it’s my first day on the job?”

“Congratulations. Can we get this over with? I’m expected home.”

She pulls the money out of her shoe. I hand her the bag. She slides it into the back of her pants and jogs away. So much for meeting new friends on the job.

MY NEXT MEETING IS ON Wall Street, a straight shot down-town on the 2. Joseph slithers past me on the train between Chambers and Fulton, slipping a bag into my jacket. I emerge from the station into a light rain with ten minutes to spare. Taking shelter in a doorway, I watch the thousand-dollar suits, water beading and rolling off their gelled hair as they yammer into portable telephones. I root for lightning.

Ten minutes past the appointed meeting time, I notice a kid my age who could have been me. A much douchier version of me. His hair is slicked back like the rest of the Yuppies, but his suit gives him away: It’s an off-the-rack version of the standard uniform. He tries to make eye contact with me, so I give him a half-nod.

“Hey,” he says. “You looking for Danny?”

“That depends,” I ask. “Are you Danny?”

“Maybe. Why?”

“Because then I’d know that I wasn’t looking for you,” I say. “Guy I’m meeting’s supposed to be wearing Armani.”

“Take it easy,
Dockers
,” he says, insulting the pants my mother bought for me. Now I really don’t like this guy. “Danny’s in his office. He told me to come find you.”

I angle myself toward the subway, ready to run—another one of Rico’s suggestions. “The proxy is like a red alert,” he told
me, surprising me with his use of the word “proxy.” “Nobody is so lazy that he ain’t gonna pick up his own shit, you know what I mean?” On the other hand, the police, in Rico’s experience, were more than capable of “these kinds of subterfuges.”

I tell him that I don’t know any Dannys.

“Danny Carr,” he insists. “He said there’s a Benjamin in it for you if you come up to his office.”

Oddly enough, the offer of extra money is actually a positive sign that this
isn’t
a setup. Another Ricoism: The police can’t make a case against someone they bribe into committing a crime. “Why would I want to come up to his office?”

He holds out his palms and shrugs. “Working for Danny means doing what he asks you to do when he asks you to do it. Or as Danny says,
why
is not a component of my job.”

“My heart bleeds for you. But I don’t work for Danny.”

“Neither will I if you don’t follow me back up there. Come on. A hundred bucks for, like, ten extra minutes of work.”

I look for any other suspicious signs. Like I’d know. “Are you a cop?” I ask per the standard script.

“Fuck no.” He smiles nervously. “Why would you think I’m a cop?”

My spirit of caution finally gives way to the greedy desire to more than double my daily pay. I follow the kid across the street into an office building. We walk past a front desk, nodding at the security guard, and ride an empty elevator to the twenty-third floor.

As soon as the doors close, he extends a hand. “Rick Cleary.”

“Okay.” I ignore his hand.

“So are you, like, Danny’s drug dealer?”

“I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I know, I know. Just the question about me being a cop.” I scan the elevator for potential hidden cameras, pretending not to hear him. “You don’t want to talk about it, that’s chill.”

We reach the twenty-third floor, where a reception desk welcomes us to DC Investments. The desk is empty, as are most of the cubicles Rick leads me past on the way to the corner office. Inside, a guy in the right suit but with Art Garfunkel hair barks what sounds like Japanese into a speakerphone. Danny Carr, I presume. Noticing me, he gestures toward the couch. Noticing Rick, he waves angrily toward the exit. Rick backs out like a geisha, closing the door behind him.

As I settle into the black leather, Danny reaches into a cabinet behind him, pulling out an unfamiliar appliance that reminds me of a birdhouse I built in tenth-grade wood shop. This birdhouse is wired for electricity, I note when he jams the plug into the wall, causing a light in the box to glow neon green. Without breaking from his conversation in Japanese, Danny returns to the cabinet for a two-foot length of surgical tubing and a small metal disk about the size of a can of Skoal.

“Where’s Carlos?” he says, finishing his call.

Carlos was my predecessor, the kid I’d seen smashing his Motorola in the stairwell. “I’m the new Carlos,” I say.

“New Carlos.” He chuckles. “Like New Coke. Let’s hope you last a little longer. You don’t look like a drug dealer.”

“It’s funny. Everyone keeps telling me that.”

“Carlos and I had a few arrangements, is all. Among them a little extra juice for making the trip upstairs.” He peels two hundred-dollar bills from a money clip and hands them to me. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“I guess not.” My eyes drift back toward the birdhouse.

“It’s called a vaporizer,” he explains. “My cousin sent me one from Los
On-hell-eez
. It’s like a health food thing. No tar—just pure THC. Just takes forever to heat up.” Danny pulls out a pack of Vantages and bangs it against his hand a couple of times before offering me one. I shake my head no. My pager’s already buzzing again.

“I should get going.”

“The Candyman’s work is never done. But while I’ve got you here, let me run something else by you. Another arrangement I had with Carlos. These skimpyass quarters are fine for the office,” he says, gesturing at the bag I’ve placed on his desk. “But for the weekend, I need a little weight. I know: They’ve already told you they don’t do weight.”

He’s right: Rico made it clear, during our time together, that transactions involving anything above and beyond the “gentleman’s quarter” are forbidden by papal decree. It’s the kind of modesty that keeps the Pontiff under the radar and out of jail. It’s also, he hinted, the reason why Carlos was fired.

“First day,” I say, holding up my hands in surrender.

“Sure,” Danny says, handing me a business card. “When you change your mind, there’s an extra five hundred dollars a week in it for you.”

•

I MEET THE NEXT CUSTOMER at the corner of Twenty-third Street and Seventh Avenue. My first thought is:
Who knew so many beautiful women smoked pot?

My next thought:
She’s a he
. Not a transvestite … just, I have to admit, a very attractive man wearing skintight leather pants and black mascara.

He screams when he sees me. “Yah! Pleeeease tell me you’ve got the damn weed!” He stomps his foot impatiently while I take him through the standard script, but manages all the right answers. Until we get to the part about the money.

“Fuuuuck!” He fumbles through his pockets, coming up with a condom and some lint.

“We’re done here,” I say, walking back toward the subway station.

He grabs my shoulder. I spin toward him, putting on what I hope is a scowl. I consider myself more lover than fighter, but I’m not about to get intimidated by a guy wearing eyeliner. “You’re violating my personal space,” I say.

“Follow me back to the crib. Kristof’s got the scratch.”

“Call again when you’re flush.” I turn again to leave.

“It’s right down the goddamn street. You know the Hotel Chelsea?”

I HAVE SEEN
SID AND NANCY
FOURTEEN TIMES.

Despite what you probably think, I’m not some crazyass obsessive fan. I mean, it’s a great movie, even if they got Johnny Rotten all wrong. A love story that isn’t full of shit, that recognizes the stupidity of it all—true love, impossible in the real world, only leads to pain.

But that’s not the reason I’ve seen it fourteen times. I’ve seen it fourteen times because it was the only movie Daphne owned, and we were usually too lazy, wasted, or horny to make it to the video store.

“Remind you of anyone we know?” she’d ask me each time after it ended. A question that should have been, let’s face it, a gigantic red flag, given that—sorry if I’m spoiling the ending for you—Sid winds up stabbing Nancy to death in a room at the Chelsea Hotel.

But then Daphne would sing Leonard Cohen: “I remember—
you well in the Chelsea Hotel, you were talking so brave and so sweet, giving me head on the unmade bed …”

At which point she would stop singing and reenact the scene—the TV was conveniently located in the bedroom. Thankfully, unlike the song or the movie, Daphne’s version always had a happy ending.

We used to talk about staying at the Chelsea for what I assumed would be a night of mind-blowing sex. Before she tried to kill me. Still, I kind of owe it to myself to see the place.

“In and out,” I say to Leatherpants. “And that’s not like, you know, a metaphor for anything. I’m serious. You better not offer to blow me when we get there.”

He’s already racing down the street. “You know, for a drug dealer,” he yells over his shoulder, “you’re dressed like a real asshole.”

The hotel, a hundred years old, looks her age. Not so much from the outside, but inside there’s an ongoing war between patchwork and decay. The smart money is on decay. But I still feel a tingle when I see the familiar lobby, nearly every square inch of wall space burnished by paintings whose placement and artistic value both seemed to have been chosen completely at random.