“Now listen, brother, you talk like that, you’re gonna have to pay some dues. I sent her the check, yeah, but I didn’t know—”
“Help me clean this place out,” John said in a voice that was final. He was throwing the bricks onto the center of the floor.
I still couldn’t get very excited about John’s problems. “Listen, man, you don’t seem to be digging what’s happened to the chick. She’s in jail, for Chrissake, and—”
“And we won’t be any good to her,” John said, taking out the jars and bottles from the medicine cabinet, “if we’re in there with her. Now come on.”
We cleaned the place out. All together, we found sixteen bricks of good smoking dope, a hundred caps of synthetic mescaline, five hundred and fifty caps of psilocybin, thirteen peyote buttons in cellophane, four ounces of hash, and some Thorazine. John got one of his friends to drive it out in a couple of suitcases to John’s uncle’s house in Lexington.
When that was done we both had a big belt of his Scotch. The room was disordered; John kicked some clothes off the couch and sat down. “If Murphy busted her, you’d better do what I’m doing,” he said. “Take off for a day or two, at least stay away from this room. It’s not going to be too cool for a while.”
I didn’t give a shit how cool it was, I had other things on my mind. “Look,” I said, “we’ve got to get her out of jail as fast as we can. She won’t know what to say, and she’ll fuck herself over in a matter of hours without some advice. If we can’t get her out and talk to her before the arraignment on Monday, she won’t know enough to plead guilty. And if that happens, the case’ll go up through the courts, dig?”
“Yeah,” said John. He was digging it. He was digging the fact that if that went down, we’d never be able to buy her off, no matter what lawyer we eventually got for her. And she’d take the full rap for the bust, probably even do some time. I waited for John to say something, to figure something out. There was a very long pause, and then he just said, “Yeah.”
“Yeah, what?”
John looked pained, really pained, for the first time since I’d walked in the door. “Peter,” he said. “The pigs have overvalued the bust, as usual. They’ve announced that they picked up fifteen-thousand-dollars’ worth of dope. So that means it’ll cost us at least three thousand to get her off. Plus her bail, which as you have noticed is essential. Now. I don’t know if her bail’s been set yet, but you can bet your ass it’ll be at least ten thousand. So that’s another grand we need right there—”
“So?”
“So this is Saturday,” John said.
“What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
“The market’s closed.”
“Now wait a minute. Are you trying to tell me you’re broke? You?”
“I’m saying I won’t have a nickel until Monday.” John paused, then added, “After ten o’clock.”
I couldn’t believe he’d said that. I couldn’t believe any of the things that had gone down that afternoon, but that was the end. Finally I said, “Far out.” Nothing more.
John nodded. “It is far out. It’s a drag, too, but it’s what’s happening. I’ll do everything I can. But I can’t do anything till Monday.”
“Far out,” I said again. Then, almost as an afterthought, “You son of a bitch.”
“Peter,” John said slowly, “it’s all I can do. It’s all I can do.” He got up and put on his jacket. On the way out he paused and said, “If you want me for anything, I’ll be at Sandra’s.”
Then the door closed, and I was alone.
38
THE FIRST THING I DID was pour myself three fingers of John’s J & B, put on some blues, and sit down to try to get my head together. Which was easier said than done. I was flashing on all the things that had gone down, on all the ridiculous little twists and turns the trip had taken in the course of a few hours. Sukie busted. Murphy on our backs again. John broke—that was what really blew my mind, that John could be broke. It was too much. Finally I realized that I wasn’t getting anywhere, that I had to get ripping or I’d just drown. But I just sat there, immobilized.
The worst thing in the world is not to be moving when you’ve got to move, when you’ve got to do something. Like hitching. I used to hitch a lot, whenever I was desperate to get moving. Once when I was bumming around Vermont I ran into this fag, an old guy who was really hurting for somebody to come-on to. He picked me up, wanted to know where I was going, and I just said, Wherever you are. Which was all he needed to get it on. Before I knew it we were off the road and at his house, and he said I should go on in and make myself comfortable, he had a few phone calls to make.
His place looked as though no one had ever lived there, full of broken furniture and old newspapers. The guy was on the phone a long time, so after a while I went into the can to take a leak. I’d just gotten it out when he popped his head in the door. His eyes lit up when he saw me and then he casually sauntered in and started brushing his teeth. I didn’t have the faintest idea what was going down, so I continued about my business. Suddenly he pops his head up from the bowl and asks me if I’ve ever been blown. I didn’t think so, I replied. Well, he demanded, wouldn’t I like to try it out now? I mean, after all, if I’d never tried it, I didn’t have the slightest idea what I was missing. I said No thanks, I didn’t want to try. The whole scene had suddenly become bizarrely comic, as I’d realized why he was brushing his teeth. The dude was being polite. He was letting me know that, hygienically at least, he wasn’t a dirty old man.
And he wasn’t about to give up so easily, either. Was I sure I didn’t want to try it out? Honest-to-goodness sure? ’Cause he’d noticed—no harm in looking, see—he’d noticed that I wasn’t circumscribed, and did I know how much more sensitive that made me? Circumcised, I thought he meant. Circumscribed, circumshmibed, what difference did it make—didn’t I want to try?
No, sorry, I didn’t, and maybe I’d just better be going, if he had finished making his phone calls. And then all of a sudden he was blocking the door, and I was realizing that he wasn’t so old, and that he was pretty big to boot. So I picked up the nearest thing at hand, which was a plumber’s helper, and asked him if he was going to get out of the way, feeling ridiculous even as I did so. Knock the fag around in his own can with his own plumber’s helper. It was too much. Suddenly I started to laugh. I couldn’t believe it, but I laughed and laughed and laughed, until I dropped the plumber’s helper; and I kept laughing long after he’d shaken his head in dumb amazement and walked out.
By the time I stopped laughing he’d brought the car around front, and was all ready to drive me back to the highway. On the way he suddenly started rapping. Seemed the dude was married, had a few kids, held down a regular job. But he just couldn’t have enough of that old Get you, Gertrude, so he’d rented the second house for practically nothing, and he went out every night picking up hitchhikers. I asked him how he did. He said that now and then he found himself a goodie, but usually they were like me. You mean No Go, I said. Well, at first, he said, but then he’d hassle them in the can, and they’d get tough and knock him around. It suddenly dawned on me that this was the whole point of that scene. They’d knock him around, and then he’d cry and apologize, and then they’d be sorry, and then half the time, it turned out, they’d feel so bad they’d wind up letting him work them over.
He was about to go on when I asked him why he did things that way. I meant that if he was a fag, why not be one full-time? Why screw around working the night shift when you’ve got the whole day, too. But he didn’t understand me that way, and what came back was a jumbled, confused defense of his wife, and the kids, and his place in the community.