“I’m looking, but I ain’t looking for pussy right this moment.” A fleeting expression of disappointment crossed the black’s face and his hungry smile faded. “Tell you what, though, I’ll keep you in mind, man, when I get around to that later.”
“All right! Peaches is my specialty, ask around. I get the freshest. ” The glowing smile returned as he danced nearer Jack. “I get a new shipment every week, so to speak.”
He nodded his head toward the interior of the bus station and left Jack to catch up with another lone man crossing the street without baggage.
Jack opened the door of the station and immediately was hit by the sickeningly sweet aroma of unwashed flesh, cigarette smoke, and fried foods. It was a busy night and the rows of plastic seats were filled with weary travelers waiting for their buses to leave Houston.
To Jack the bus station was a surreal place where zombies walked in dazes waiting for their lives to resume. Unlike the airport passengers, bus travelers rarely dressed to be seen and admired. They wore comfortable, loose clothing in anticipation of the long hours on the nation’s highways. They carried hampers or paper bags stuffed with fried chicken and pieces of chocolate cake from home. If they had children with them, they did not try to control their behavior. It was hard to sit still on the bus for hours, so stopovers and departure time were a welcomed break for energetic youngsters. Jack wondered if the travelers and the people who served them really felt as despondent and exhausted as they looked.
A sloe-eyed girl wearing a preteen bra that clearly showed through beneath a yellow nylon blouse sidled past Jack. She carried a movie magazine and a stuffed donkey. Behind her came the soft-shoe wizard with a wink and a leer that turned Jack’s stomach. Jack’s instinct took over and made him move before he thought about it. He was beside the girl at the luncheon counter before the black man could reach her side.
“Hey, what’chu doin’?” There was a steel edge in the black man’s voice.
“Later, man. This is my sister from Corpus Christi, all right?”
The wizard thumbed his nose and did a military turn.
The girl stared wistfully up into Jack’s eyes. “Am I your sister?” she asked in a piping voice. “I don’t remember having a brother looked as good as you.”
“Are you in here alone?” Jack asked more severely than he had meant to. When were kids going to learn?
The girl turned her head away and sulked, one hand fondling the stuffed donkey in her lap.
“You just get into Houston?” Jack tried again in a softer tone.
“What business is it of yours?”
“Listen, kid, runaways get put into homes.”
The girl’s spine straightened. She drew a glass of Coke closer and spoke around the straw in her mouth.
“You’re a cop,” she said with confidence. “You can’t bust me. I ain’t done nothin’.”
“I repeat runaways…” Jack was not sure what to say.
“I ain’t no fucking runaway, okay? I live down on Gray and I like to hang out here. Is that against the law?”
Jack shook his head and swirled around on his stool to make sure the wizard was gone. He stood up. He was seconds away from losing control. “You’re too young to be selling, kid. Goddammit, go home.”
The girl pushed the Coke away and, grabbing her donkey and magazine, made a beeline for the door.
Jack sat back down and ordered coffee. He caught himself rubbing the scar on his cheek and slapped his hand onto the counter. What in the hell was he doing anyway? Maybe Mrs. Lawrence was right. He was wasting his time and destroying his health and his nerves.
“Hey man, you look kinda wiped out. You could use something to ease you outta pain, huh?”
Jack turned and saw a thin, pimply young man in dirty chinos and black T-shirt with a red Led Zepplin logo printed across the front. “You talking to me?” Jack asked. I have to play the game, he thought, no matter how bad I feel or how low I get.
“What the fuck, man, I know how you feel. This place is sick, you know? This whole fucking scene is sick. I seen how you helped that girl. The wizard, man, he’s nigger-bitching mean to his girls. You done right, I could see that. You got balls. I think I could do you a favor.”
“What kind of favor could you do me?” Jack turned all the way around to face the boy. At least this one was talking.
“Like relieve your worries, man. How ’bout if we step into someplace private, like the john?”
Jack followed the boy into the men’s rest room and took up a position near the door with his back to the wall. “What you got?” he asked.
“I’m a little low, you know, but I still got some ’ludes and some grass, man, that’s laced sweeter than goose shit,” the young man offered.
“I don’t want any freaking angel dust. How much for the ’ludes?”
“Oh man!”
Jack looked up, fearful of the deriding tone of the boy’s voice. He had made a mistake; it was not angel dust on the grass. The mistake could blow his getting any closer to the kid. The grass must be laced with strychnine. “Hey, you wanna sell to me or don’t you? I can take a hike right now if you’re not interested.”
Jack snatched the door handle and smiled slightly when the boy’s hand on his shoulder stopped him.
“Okay, okay, wire yourself down. It don’t matter about the fucking grass. So you don’t want sweet Jesus anointing your head, that’s your business, jack.”
Jack flinched at the use of his name until he realized the kid was using the word to mean “buddy.”
“How much?” Jack kept a firm grip on his wallet and saw the kid’s eyes glaze over while he calculated.
“Will this do you?” He whipped out a twenty and the boy quickly reached into his underwear and handed over a tiny clear plastic bag of pills.
“There, that’ll take care of all your nigger bitching,” the boy said. “I forgot, but I got some crank too if you ain’t into anything too heavy, you know. It’s cheap, but it’ll pump you when you’re too far down.”
“Not tonight, thanks.” Not ever, he thought.
“You come down here often? I can get you most anything if you lay in an order, you know.”
“Not often enough for that. What about you? Can I find you here every night?”
They moved through a clutch of Mexicans to the counter again and sat down. Jack wanted to keep the kid talking.
“I’l1 be around. Just ask for Stevie and I can pop up out of the blue for a good bill.”
They both ordered Cokes and donuts. “On me,” Jack said.
During the next hour, except for two interruptions from buyers who took Stevie off to the men’s room, Jack found out more information on the boy’s lifestyle and habits than he had bargained for. He was small time and his dope dealing went to supplement his meager daytime income as an alarm installer. He was hoping for more extensive drug territory and a greater stock for a burgeoning market, but so far his suppliers had kept him small and he was not making enough to quit work altogether. He lived in an alley apartment in the Heights with “a girl named Judy Lee who has hair down to her ass and legs all the way up to her shoulders.”
“You must know a lot of people,” Jack ventured, hoping the boy liked ego tripping.
“I know my share.”
“You hear about those killings we’ve been having here?” Jack asked casually.