The Monopoly Man
by Barry B. Longyear
The Monopoly Man
by Barry B. Longyear
The end. This was it: Cheri Trace was in it thick. She’d been close before. That time with the bangers on Broadway. The other time with that ... time she didn’t like to think about. But this was the real end. Panic was in her face, an arm down her throat and a ragged claw hooked into every nerve.
She was out.
Out.
That trumped it alclass="underline" The punch in the face, the money gone, the purse gone, the blood on her tube top, the pain in her face and ribs, the indifferent smear of faces rushing past in the night fusing into the jumble of lights on West Forty-second. Next to being in pain, sick, and out, nothing’s important. Death a distant second. Getting close to ultimate options.
She leaned back against a wall trying not to look up at the passing faces, the theatergoers, touristas, and street sludge who had yet to be sucked all the way down. On the marquee across the street, Kimberli Fallon in Party Girl.
She laughed bitterly. “The suck’s coming for you, too,” she whispered at the marquee.
Cheri jumped at an imagined movement within a shadow, made a grab at the air, another, then covered her eyes with one hand and sighed. “Bastard. Even took my cigarettes.”
Never even got a look at him. Muggers. Think you’re immune. Look tough, street cred, like you belong here, man, one of the people, not prey but fellow predator. Code. Honor among bastards. Only protection is to have eyes all around your head and guns pointed in all directions, a sign that says “AIDS, fool! TB! Leprosy! Dynamite in every pocket!”
Beware, man, I’m made of cyanide—Yeah. Like they could even read....
She slowly turned her face against the wall, rested her bruised cheek against cold glass, forced herself not to cry. Red puffy eyes not attractive. Besides, girl crying on the street and next thing Crusader Rabbit shows on a salvation mission.
...Humpty Dumpty had a great fall—
Don’t cry. There, there, honey, it’ll be all right.
All right? That word “all” covers a lot of ground, dude. Don’t make promises you can’t keep.
So, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men—
Aw hell.
Cheri didn’t want to meet Jesus or Dudley Do-Right unless he was holding. She held her aching left cheek against the cold glass as universal truth ground at the back of her head: If she didn’t score something soon, the universe would end. Worse than that, it might not end.
Get something.
—Focus, direction. First money. Before money, market the goods. Before marketing, inventory. She stood back from the wall, looked down at the blood drying on the front of her white tube top. She wondered what her face looked like. Hamburger probably.
Rest room. McDonald’s back on the Square. She could slip into the rest room there, wash her face, rinse her top, use the blow dryer, maybe borrow someone’s makeup and stay out of the strong lights—
She caught a glimpse of her right shoulder reflected in the glass protecting a poster advertising the motion picture Brooks, Kevin Costner as serial killer. The poster was very dark. Poster and glass made a great black mirror. Where her face had rested against the glass was a smear of blood. She moved to her right until she could see her entire face. It wasn’t just a bloody nose. Cheri’s upper lip looked like a wiener, her left eye was bruised almost black and partially closed. “Who would want that?” she cried.
Her cute little white beret was gone, too. She looked so good in it. Her hair ... god, what a mess.
She closed her eyes, her head shaking.
Is this the night, she thought. Is this the night it all catches up with me?
You’re in a foot race with a monster who is meaner, faster, stronger, tougher, and more patient than you. And you get surprised when it catches up?
Fool. Fool.
Shadows. She needed deep shadows. Safety was no longer an option. Those who look for love in shadows don’t expect much. Of course, acknowledged Cheri, they don’t expect to pay much. Enough, though.
“Enough to score—enough to get home.”
Cheri had some stuff hidden back in the room she shared with Trina, if Trina hadn’t found it and shot it all. That was why Cheri had taken to carrying most of her help with her in her purse. If she could just make it back to the room. Before that, money. Before that, business. Before that, shadows.
Bryant Park, thickly bordered with trees, nothing going on at this time of year. Too cold for concerts and summer fashion shows, sipping spritzers on the grass. Not cold enough yet for ice skating or winter fashions. Lots of shadows, bushes. Once you’re noticed, plenty of places to go not to be noticed again. The negotiation of virtue for medicine—a little something to keep off the crawlies.
She turned from the poster and, keeping her face down, walked east toward the park, the crowds thinning rapidly once she reached the corner of Sixth. A chilling breeze whipped up the wide avenue and she glanced down at her legs barely covered by the miniskirt. She nodded to herself as her gaze elevated to rest upon the trees of the park. The legs were still good. Cold, but commercial.
Crossing Sixth when the light changed, she could see figures moving among the trees. Joggers, a couple or two bundled up against the chill, walking, some older kids shuffling along, profiling for each other, a few looking to score. Working girls. They’d have pimps nearby who’d add some to Cheri’s looks if they caught her.
She got on the paved path flanked on her left by the ranks of trees. One of her johns once told her they were sycamores. He could’ve been wrong. He was sure wrong about some other things, like that piece of tin in his pocket.
Automatically she looked for both cops and distribution outlets. Two guys holding; recognized them both. The one across the street was Cuff. Cuff wouldn’t extend credit to his own mother to keep her from starving to death. He wasn’t violent. Just had the heart of a crocodile. His favorite saying: “Neither a borrower nor a lender be.” The other one, farther up on her side of the street beneath his favorite tree, was Rackshack. Cheri had ripped off Rackshack. Shortest love affair in history. She moved in, found his bags in the wall, she moved out—with her purse packed with Rackshack’s merchandise. Terrific three weeks and until she ran out she’d been everybody’s best friend. Everybody’s but Rackshack’s. He’d kill her if he ever saw her.
That ultimate option again: Quit the race. Lay down—put down, throw down—that burden. Shoot it, crush it, choke it, kill it, let it and everything else in the universe die.
Tired.
Suddenly Cheri felt very cold, very old, and very tired—the flint-hard kind of bone weariness that didn’t care where it slept, whether in a bed, a gutter, or a grave. The cold. If she could just stop shaking, get the cold out of her bones, the ants out of her skin. She turned and glanced again at Rackshack. He usually packed. Had him a S&W nine he was proud of. Maybe he could do her this one last favor.
“What’s it cost, Rack?”
“Huh?” Rackshack was always quick with that witty comeback.
“A cap outta that nasty old nine you got tucked in your shorts under that bad old Rangers jersey, Rack. Let me have the first one for free? Right here in my head?”
She hovered in a limbo of indecision. Rackshack just stood there: tall, dark, a perpetual smirk on his face, an oversized Mets cap on sideways, dealing his death. The Rack don’t do no drugs. He net himself four-five large a day and it go in the bank right there in the corner and make it self four-and-a-half to five percent, and all is right with Rack’s world.