CHAPTER ELEVEN 

CHAPTER FOUR

            I took the el down to Fourth and Greene and they were there as promised. George had to practically beat this visit out of me, as things had gotten way too out of hand for him to even consider in his own head that he would get out of this unhurt. I was supposed to essentially give up the whole game, if I was going to do what he said, but these cats didn’t know me and sure as shit wouldn’t be able to tell if I was going to pull a little one over them. After all, they wouldn’t want to talk to George about this anyways after I got through with them.

            Fenster and Rocco were there right away, I presumed. They were both standing there with their identical arm bends and cigarette smoke wafting up at the same angle, a little curve off to the side with the breeze, and under the streetlight, the almost violet color of the streak against the midnight shadows on the stark gray warehouse that stretched down the river side of Fourth. The grip of my boots against the concrete was audible, or so I thought, and they were looking at me kind of queerly. They couldn’t have known for sure if I was the guy they were supposed to meet, even though I had to be, who else would be walking down here intently towards them, besides maybe a cop? I knew that’s what they were thinking, knowing but suspicious. It accounted for their vibe and no matter what I knew I had the advantage in that situation.

            I gave them a kind of nod and their mood visibly shifted, reminding me of a kind of esoteric sigh of relief. They straightened themselves up from their identical slouches, looked at each other for confirmation, and pulled away from the lamp post and started towards me. They were completely anxious, and I was sure not to smile or appear anything but anxious myself, trying to give off the appearance of a restrained, hurried shuffle, my head bowed a bit but not much. I noticed they stopped when our shadows touched and slipped into each other. Trying to give off the impression of me approaching them, but it was too late.

            “Gentlemen,” I said, looking at them directly. They were nodding and huffing their cigarettes. One of them, the shorter one standing near the street forcefully flicked his to the side. It crossed the other guy and bounced off the wall of the warehouse, sparks dissipating like fireworks and the butt falling limply to the ground.

            “You Luke?” The tall one asked.

            “Yeah. Fenster and Rocco, right?” I asked.

            The tall one spat against the wall. “I’m Fenster. That’s Rocco. We hear you have some kind of development for us.”

            I nodded. “George is being removed from the operation.”

            “What?” Rocco this time.

            “George is out. He feels that the license plate number was enough.”

            Rocco stepped towards me, closing the gap between us by half. He looked furious. “That fuck. And who are you?”

            Fenster pulled Rocco back a bit. “Ernie is still not convinced that the car was the one. He found it junked anyway. Someone fucking tipped whoever off. This thing is not going well. His interests in this situation are growing every day and he simply cannot afford to have anything go wrong.”

            I nodded. I love a man who can talk calm and straight. “Then perhaps this will give you enough incentive to find a good story.” I reached my hand into my coat pocket slowly, causing them to reach into theirs just as slow, until I looked at Fenster and tried to give him a facial expression that would imply that it was all good. He held his hand in his coat but did not reach further.

            When I pulled out the money they seemed to relax a bit. Fenster asked, “What’s that? Where did it come from?”
            “Not your concern anymore. Just tell Ernie that George is gone. I don’t care how, just make it happen.”

            Fenster shook his head slowly. “I don’t know who the fuck you are but when George left the plant and split Ernie was determined to have the guy hunted down.”

            I smiled. “Ernie doesn’t give a fuck about George, and you know that. All he’s worried about is that the shit is out of his way.”

            Rocco swore and kicked the ground. He turned to Fenster. “How the fuck do we know that this guy isn’t part of the operation? How do we know that George even knows this guy? How do we know that this guy can find out what we need to know?”
            Fenster, growing increasingly more irritated, stepped up a bit to where Rocco was. He was taller and took up more space so I shrunk back a bit, trying to appear worried a bit. He gave me a condescending nod and looked down on me. He had a good three inches on me and looking up, the streetlight in the background cupped an aura around his head. “Rocco’s got a good point, Luke. Why on earth should we take this money from you? What’s your interest here?”

            “Nothing but cash,” I said. “Cash and this.” I unzipped my right sleeve pocket and pulled out the blow from it. It was in a little dime bag that I was flapping back and forth dangling it between my thumb and index fingers. The seal on the bag was undeniable. Their eyes glowed. I dropped it into Fenster’s expecting palm. He opened it, dipped his pinkie in, and sampled it on the tip of his tongue. He nodded, smirking, and placed the bag in his pocket.

            “If this is what it is,” he said, “I think we can work together. Ernie won’t care about the how of your coming into possession of this. I assume if you’re showing me this you can acquire more.”

            “Right,” I said. “Tell Ernie it was George who did it and now he wants out. Tell him he took all the four kilos and passed it to me to- to redistribute.”

            “And?” Fenster said.

            “And,” I said, putting off that I was giving up more than I wanted to, “That guy is probably in it. And the Buick was dumped. But I don’t know yet who was behind it. But I’ll find out. Because now you know I can.”

            “And we keep this and the rest.”

            “Next week, Monday, here.”

            “Right,” Fenster said, and then the two of them turned right around and walked down the block, turning at the corner. I started to walk back to the el, smiling. About two minutes later they cruised past me, watching, and sped off, turning onto the highway junction. I couldn’t help but laugh. And now all I had to do was find the girl.

                                                                        ~

            Turk and Marshall walked up the last flight of stairs to Caitlyn’s apartment, looking over their respective shoulders like they did at every landing. Not that they were paranoid. They had been smart about the whole thing up until now; they hadn’t told any kids, they did tell friends but only the closest of friends, ones who either knew Caitlyn (or Gina, for that matter; even though the setup was in Caitlyn’s closet Gina had a financial stake in it and everyone considered her, along with Turk, Marshall, and Caitlyn, the inner circle or “the business”) or ones they knew they could trust.

            But since the plants, twenty-five in all, were in Caitlyn’s closet, everything went through her. This made Turk and Marshall uneasy for no other reason than that they could not be around them twenty-four hours a day. They likened leaving the plants to leaving a child at day care. You know they’re okay, but still... it was unsettling. Ever since they nearly got busted at their dad’s house the previous winter and their mom found out that their dad had not only allowed them but helped them, she had forbid it completely and threatened to get the state involved with custody. Turk had turned 18 already but Marshall wouldn’t for another year and a half. So their father told them to find another place to grow.

            Turk knocked. Caitlyn opened the door a few moments later in a Ozzy Ozbourne tee shirt and those green shorts that Turk thought were the ugliest things in the known universe. “Come on in,” she said, waving them through the door. They filed in, Turk in front. Gina’s door, to his right, was open. He peeked his head in. Gina was sitting at her computer. She leaned back in her chair and waved. He smiled and waved back and she greeted them.

            Turk made sure the door clicked behind him. “You gonna check out the plants with us?” he asked in a loud whisper.

            “Give me a second,” Gina said. “I’ll be right there.”

                                                                        ~

<reed>  now all I have to get you to do is send me one

<frau> I can send you one marcus.

<frau> she sent me one when I was first talking to her

<reed> did she?

<sloegin> I have to find a good one marcus.

<reed> I don’t care if it’s a good one, Gina. I just want to be able to visualize you.

<frau> this was back when we were first talking on #lesbiansex

<reed> to have a face to go along with the words

<sloegin> shh about that ;)

<reed> oooh tell me more

<sloegin> look i have to go, my friends are here

<frau> ok babe

<reed> ok sweetie see you soon

<sloegin> bbl

                                                                        ~

/quit #life bye bye all

                                                                        ~

*frau waves

*sloegin has left #life (bye bye all)

                                                                        ~

            Gina clicked her computer’s monitor off and walked into Caitlyn’s room where Turk and Marshall already had the doors open and were kneeling on the ground inspecting the plants. They’d had a good three weeks or so of growth since the initial germination of the seeds and were progressing nicely. The tallest ones were around three to four inches tall, with thick, healthy stems and deep green leaves. The fans hummed and gently blew against the plants and the intense yellow from the high pressure sodium lights spilled into the room. The room absolutely reeked of marijuana.

            “God, does it smell like this all the time?” Marshall asked, looking up from the plant he’d been inspecting. It was one of the larger ones. A fully formed leaf rested in his open palm and fluttered a bit with the breeze from the fan.

            “I can’t really tell,” Caitlyn said. She was standing over them, hands on her hips. “I’m here all the time. Did it smell when you came in?”

            “Not really,” Turk said. He looked at Marshall, who shook his head. “But now that the shit is opened up, it reeks.”

            Marshall shrugged. “Well, there’s twenty-five weed plants in here.”

            “Can you smell it Gina?” Turk asked. “Gina?”

            “Out here,” Gina called from the hallway. “I’m finishing my cigarette. And yes, I can smell it.”

            Marshall, who’d taken out his pack of cigarettes, was looking at Caitlyn. “Not while the door is open. Don’t want them to get any tobacco smoke.”

            “Why not?” asked Turk.

            “Well, it’s poison,” Caitlyn said simply.

            The room held a collective ‘oh’. Marshall leaned in real close to one of the plants, touching the top leaves with his nose. He sniffed audibly and petted the plant’s stem.

            “Man,” Marshall said, standing up. He slid the plant he had been looking at over with his foot. “These already look a lot better than ours. The ones from dad’s house.”

            “Well, we know a lot more about growing now,” Turk replied impatiently. He looked over at Caitlyn, who shrugged. Gina came back in the room holding a water bottle, which she offered to the room. When nobody visibly responded she crossed the room and sat down next to Caitlyn on the bed. Her feet, about two inches off the floor, swung back and forth. Gina was careful to keep her feet out of range of the plants, seven of which were out and being looked at.

            “So what’s up Gina?” asked Marshall.

            “Not much, just admiring your guys’ handiwork,” Gina said. “They don’t look very impressive, though, do they?”

            Gina pointed at them and Caitlyn saw what she meant. The sight of them all in their individual pots at her feet was slightly comical. Other than the sight of the infamous, pop-culturizied leaf, Caitlyn didn’t see anything but skinny garden weeds. Certainly nothing that one would think would be special enough to be raised delicately. Except for that smell, Caitlyn thought. That’s how the first guys that smoked it knew it was something good. Something worth ingesting.

            “They will look impressive,” Turk said. “Once this shit gets to like five feet and has three inch long buds all over it, the shit will look gorgeous.”

            “Five feet?” Gina asked.

            “Yeah, at least.”

            “How tall were they when you were growing at your dad’s place?”

            “Not tall at all,” Marshall said.

            “What do you mean?”

            “We were growing in a fucking armoire down in the basement,” Turk said.

            “I don’t get it. Caitlyn said your dad was helping you grow.”

            Caitlyn tapped Gina’s arm. “Even though their dad was helping them out he was scared as shit that someone would find out. So they had this armoire set up in the corner of the cellar.  A humming, glowing hunk of furniture in the basement. Totally inconspicuous.”

            Gina laughed. “The plants were inside?”

            Turk nodded sullenly. “Yep. The shit was only five feet tall to begin with. We hollowed out the back as best we could but in the end we only had enough room for six plants which all topped out at three and a half feet. The armoire was small. We had to grow the buds straight up. All in all a rushed, overeager, shoddy attempt. They smoked all right, it was good bud, but it’s nothing like we’re going to have here. This,” he emphasized, circling his hand over the plants, “is a true operation.”

            “So how did you guys get caught last time?”

            “Our mom came by the house one day and found the thing and unplugged it,” Turk replied.  “Said she was going to call the cops. All kinds of ugly shit.”

            “Fuck,” Gina said. She looked at Caitlyn, who was nodding. “That sucks!”

            “Bet your ass it sucked,” Marshall said, shaking his head.

            “She just left everything there. Fucking fans off, lights off, for twelve hours,” Turk said. “Right at the beginning of our second round of growing. Half of the plants died then. Of the ones that survivied that weren’t males we got another month or so of life. But they died too, eventually.”

“Wait,” Gina said. “I thought your parents were divorced. Like long since divorced.”

            “They are,” Turk replied. “She wasn’t even supposed to be in the house, but she knew and the bitch had to put her nose in our business. They’ve been divorced for five years now, and rarely speak.”

            “I’m sorry,” Gina said.

            “God, why?”

            “I don’t know,” Gina said. “You just seem to have all this bitterness about your mom. I’ve just never had to go through a divorce. It must suck.”

            “I feel kind of grateful.”

            “Grateful?”

            Turk shrugged. “Yeah. They hated each other, so it was better for them. Plus, it let me get to know my parents as people, rather than as parents, you know?”

            “I guess,” Gina said, her voice a bit reserved.

            “Plus, because of that I can say I hate my mom without guilt. Because I know her as a person.”

            “You don’t see that as at all unfortunate?”

            “That I see it?”

            “No,” Gina said. “That it’s there.”

            “I didn’t say I liked it. I said I was grateful for it.”

            “The divorce?”

            “What it showed me,” Turk said. “I don’t have to love everybody. I don’t expect to. I leave that to hippies like my cousin, Herb-” he gestured to Caitlyn- “the dude whose account you’re using.” He saw her nod and smiled. He dipped his head quick to his right, indicating Marshall. “-And, to a lesser extent, my brother over there.”
            Marshall laughed. He gave a big toothy grin and with his hand made a gun-shooting motion towards Turk. “I’m going to go have a cigarette,” he said flatly. He took his pack out of his shirt pocket and flipped it up in the air as he stood. He tried to catch it but it hit off his fingers and flipped in the direction of the door. He scooped it up on his way out. In the new silence of the room they heard a lighter click and the faint hiss of burning paper.

            Turk bent down and began to put the plants back in the closet. Caitlyn reclined and lay down on the bed, arms spread at her sides like wings. Gina sat for a moment dangling her arms between her legs before deciding to get up. She’d figured to go back online and talk to her friends there for a minute. Marcus was on and she wanted to get back to talking to him. It was the first time she had talked to him in over a week, and the first time in a while that the conversation was light and easy. She still hadn’t told him about John but she had decided not to tell him, and this had eased her mind a bit. She resolved this by talking to Caitlyn, whom she always visited for advice when she needed it to be unbiased. She immensely disliked talking about her IRC friends to anyone other than other IRC friends, being kind of embarrassed about being wrapped up in the whole thing. But she figured that since Caitlyn already knew how involved she was in it (ever since the picture came, anyway), that it wouldn’t hurt just once.

            She hadn’t been online very much for the first two weeks or so of her relationship with John. When the initial excitement and constant hanging out began to wane a bit (they still dated but were now being patient), she started going online again. Marcus, who Gina felt knew but deliberately wasn’t saying anything, had started to drift away as well. Caitlyn suggested that Gina could keep it real with Marcus without telling him that she was seeing someone. He didn’t need to know that. Because he was so far removed, telling him that she was seeing someone would only complicate everything and give him a reason to think that he should know. It’s the kind of thing you only tell someone if they need to know, Caitlyn had said. The only circumstance under which he would have a claim to that information would be if he and Gina were in a committed relationship, or were actively considering entering one. Obviously he didn’t think either of those because a) they had never met face to face and b) they weren’t going to any time soon. So, viola.

            It made sense to Gina. For her part she’d decided to send a photograph. Something he could deservedly expect, having sent her one and having had her grudgingly agree to do the same. She just had to find a good one, where her curves weren’t so prominent and her demeanor wasn’t flaky. The news of it had made Marcus extremely happy, so she took that as evidence that she would be doing the right thing.

            Marshall snagged her in the hallway. Gina gasped.

            “Shit!” she screamed.

            “Sorry.”

            “You scared the shit out of me.”

            “I just wanted to ask you if I could send a quick email at some point. When you’re not busy.”

            Gina hesitated for a moment, thinking that Marshall might see some IRC script of her flirting with reed and then tell John, but remembered she’d logged off. “Sure,” she said. “Whenever you want.” Then she remembered that Marshall wouldn’t give a shit anyway.

            “Thanks,” Marshall said.

            “You see John today?”

            “Not since last night,” Marshall said.

            “You guys had practice, right?”

            “Mmmhm.”

            “How is shit going? With the band.”

            Marshall did a quick check over his shoulder and lowered his voice. “Ever get the feeling that you’re living history?”

            Gina laughed. “Unfortunately, no.”

            “Me neither. But this band, the fucking Gateway Drug, this is of monumental import,” Marshall said, his voice awed. “Fucking incredible. I mean, this is my first band, so I may be getting this blown up in my head- god knows everyone else is so calm about it- but there’s really some incredible shit going on in those practices.” He paused. “Your boyfriend is one genius musician.” He saw her face go red instantly. “Well, whatever he is to you, he’s been a godsend to us.”

            Gina cleared her throat and tried to forget that she must be blushing like crazy. “He actually doesn’t really talk about the band all that much. He keeps saying he’d rather I came to a rehearsal. You know his thing about performing.”

            Marshall looked at her quizzically. “What thing?”

            “As he would say, ‘the demonstration factor’,” Gina said, lowering her voice a bit and doing quite a good impression.

            Marshall laughed. “What’s the demonstration factor?”
            “As in he’d rather demonstrate his ideas about that band to me rather then try and explain them. He doesn’t feel he explicates his musical ideas well.”

            Marshall brought his hand to his face and squeezed his mouth. It was a thing he did whenever he was thinking intently about something; that and the furrowed brow. Gina had a habit of picking up those little individual quirks, like hand movements or expressions (she’d already picked up John’s way of describing things as “the (blank) factor”), but not this one. It looked excruciating.

            Marshall looked up. “Like, if he could he wouldn’t need to play music.”

            “Exactly.”

            Marshall looked pleased. “I hear that. You should hear him in the studio, though. As far as telling us what he wants us to do when he’s teaching us one of his songs. He cracks the whip. He’s real precise.”

            Gina peered around the corner. Turk and Caitlyn were kneeling on the ground, transferring the last of the small plants to their phase two (of three) pots. “I bet Turk doesn’t like that one bit,” she whispered.

            “On the contrary, dear Gina. Turk loves it. He loves John’s songs. He loves to learn them. He’s totally down with where John’s coming from. We’re actually about 50-50 now, as far as new shit we’re playing.”

            “You guys are playing a DIY Sunday, right?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Well, I’ll be there,” Gina said. “I think the practice might be a bit much. I’d rather let you guys work. But I’ll hit all the live shows. I fucking love you guys. I think you’re awesome.”

            “Thanks, man,” Marshall said. “We’re getting tighter, but it’s like Turk said, you know? We’re only as strong as our weakest link. And right now, it’s me, being the only amateur musician in the band.”

            “You just have to keep playing. Playing with those guys can only make you better.”

            “It’s true,” Turk said. They turned around and Turk was leaning against the doorway, legs crossed, slightly tilted, a lit cigarette in his mouth. He looked like a longhair James Dean.

            He pointed at Marshall. “Don’t you fucking worry about a thing. What have I told you? Just playing with people will make you better. And dude, you have progressed superbly.”

            Marshall and Gina were leaning against the other wall, suppressing laughter. Turk shrugged and fluttered his hands. “And to think, we voted you Most Valuable Band Member last week.”

            Marshall laughed heartily. Caitlyn came out of the room, her palms upturned and caked with soil. She was looking at Turk with the expression of a mother who has lost patience with a rambunctious two year old at the supermarket. “Are you going to help me finish these or what?”

            Turk snickered and walked back into Caitlyn’s room. Caitlyn huffed and followed him, hands still extended, trying to avoid touching anything. Gina and Marshall looked after them, and the shuffling sound of dirt-brushed pots moving along the floor filled the living room. 

           “Anyway,” Marshall said. “How’s everything else? Ready for the real world?”

            “What?”

            “Aren’t you graduating?”

            “Oh, right,” Gina said flatly. “That.”      

            “Yeah, that.”

            Gina laughed. “Well, as long as I don’t bomb my finals next week.”

            “Is there a chance of that happening?” Marshall asked.

            Gina shook her head. “No, not really.”

Marshall smiled. “Maybe Caitlyn will take your lead and finish up.”

“Caitlyn will be fine. She just needs her pedestal. Come on, you want to use my account?”

            “Let’s do it,” Marshall said, following her extended arm into the room.

                                                                        ~

            “Thanks. See you later.”

            The guy, who looked kind of familiar to her but not really, walked away, pausing to lean against one of the many columns that supported the flat concrete sheet that lay over the Podium. Even though it was early May and quite warm, the setup of the Podium still guaranteed a good breeze. He cupped his hand around the cigarette that he bummed off Gina and flicked his lighter a half-dozen times until it finally caught and lit his cigarette. He raised it to her in salutary gratitude and bopped away.

            Gina was outside of the library, smoking a cigarette. It was finals time, so there were a lot of people at the library, and always about three or four at any time taking smoke breaks. Her last final, 19th Century American Literature, was tomorrow morning, a stupid class, a class she took only because having loaded up on programming classes last year, she had a free elective and couldn’t even imagine doing anything in comp sci or math. She’d been more than halfway through The American when she decided she’d had enough for at least fifteen minutes. She was going to smoke a cigarette and then get a taco before burying her head in the last hundred or so pages. Then she was going to go home, and she and Caitlyn, who should be home from work by the time she got home, were going to get fried out of their minds. Then she’d go on IRC for probably just a little bit, to say hi to everyone, and if reed were on they could talk, then she’d go to sleep and wake up and take her final and be done with college.

            She had been trying to place where she had seen the guy before. When that feeling of having seen a face before happened on campus it was one of two things, usually. Either the person was in one of her classes at some point, or she had just happened to see the person a lot walking around the podium. He just came up to her smiling, as if he knew her but he did not recognize her name when they exchanged them. Reggie Kent. He said he was a senior, he said he’d just been in the library studying for the last of his finals, he said he was heading down to his job at Mild Wally’s to pick up his check (why he didn’t have cigarettes), he said he was then going to his apartment to get fried, and has he had that place for long, being from around here? No, he actually decided to live on campus rather than commute, he wanted a little break from his family and to do the college thing on his own. His older sister had commented at one point that going away to college to stay was the best decision she had ever made and she passed that on to him and he took it.

            Had she seen him in class? It was possible but he said that though he was a comp sci minor, he’d taken all his comp sci classes in the past three semesters and they’d been fairly low level, the minimum classes you could take and still qualify for the minor. And he listed them anyway, and they were all classes she’d taken freshman and sophomore year, when he was apparently overdosing on government and international relations and econ. But couldn’t stand the econ minor. He dropped it and started taking comp sci because he loved to play on the computer and decided to turn his hobby into a minor. Then she said well, she must have seen him in the labs, working on programs. He said probably that was it but it would have been IRC, not programming. He did all his programming at home. IRC! Holy shit, she said. What’s your nick? Barret, he said. Barret, oh shit, she was sloegin that whole time! She saw him all the time, so did he, she always came up when he did searches for people with Albany addresses. We’d actually talked a couple of times, he said. Wow, Gina said. She was still curious though. She spent a lot of time there and thought given that, that if indeed she knew him from the labs that he’d look more familiar than he did. I shaved my goatee a while ago, he said. But that wasn’t quite it, she thought. Oh, he said. Contacts. And this. He reached into his bag and pulled out a baseball cap, put it on backwards and then turned around. She was staring at the word PRIMUS now, just as she had been for two years. And contacts.

            I remember you man, he said. Why do you think I came up? I wanted to say hi. Before we both graduate. Didn’t know you were sloegin, though, that’s funny. He was smiling.

            He said she could come get fried with them tonight, and she said argh, fuck, I really have to get reading this book. He understood. He thanked her for the cigarette. She told him to wait, they should get fried tomorrow night, hang out. He couldn’t. He was leaving tomorrow. He and his housemates had gone down to New York during spring break and got an apartment. They let them sign a lease starting May 14th. Tomorrow. They already had the truck. His two other housemates, who were moving with him, were already done. All he had to do was take this last final. And, return a couple of books. He told her to be in touch.

            As he bopped away, Gina wondered why he hadn’t given her his phone number so that they could do just that and decided that it was because he knew she had his e-mail.

                                                                        ~

            I have to revisit so much to get back to her. She won’t believe me, I know that already. I’ve seen her around the apartment a lot, and when Johnson Trevor is not home you can see a real sad look in her eye, as if she knows something is down. She waits outside the building for a few minutes, sometimes, as if she might catch him on the way in. She never has, but there have been times when he’s come home a half-hour after she’d gone. Always the same. By himself, quickly. Never looks around, never seems to care. As if it’s all nothing. And I’ve also noticed since George dropped this on me that the car is rarely there when he comes home. It is, sometimes, but it mostly comes about an hour after he comes home and is out of there before he leaves.

            Rocco and Fenster don’t know this, of course. The fucking saps would believe anything I told them about the car but I couldn’t pull the drug thing off for too long. I only found two empty bags with that seal when I went up. They’d want either money or evidence that I had more or could produce more fairly soon, so I’d have to take down that screen at some point. But I figured that I’d bought myself a couple days to try and meet and make good with the girl. If I could convince her that her boyfriend, this guy, her lover, was fucking around in something dangerous, and that she was best not to tell him that she knew, I could use her. She would trust me. She’d give me info that I could change around enough to eliminate the Rocco and Fenster factor and deal straight with Eddie. Once I got through to Eddie, I could find out what he wanted out of me in all this in the first place. I mean, we hadn’t even been on good terms since I left the plant, and especially after the crew and all, and there’s no way he would be specific enough to bother me after two years just to piss me off. No, I think he wants to see if I can get back to him. It’s maybe a test, maybe not. But I’ll get this shit over on them and if they’re not serious, they should know that I am.

            And I know this girl and I know her type, and I know her brand of sad eyes. I’ve seen the way this type of person interacts with people. I’ve seen her ask for the time. I think I know what it takes to get inside of her head, a person like that. I know, it’s all so similar. It’s all right, you know, because we’re really going to be great together. I already know how it’s going to happen. I can see it in her eyes and I can see it in how she walks away, I know her style of waiting, what kind of things she gives the most attention to when standing randomly, smoking a cigarette, watching the street pass.

                                                                        ~

            Nick yawned again and walked over to the window. It was two in the morning, Wednesday, and there were actually people on the streets. He couldn’t believe it. Johnson Trevor and his girl were snuggling in the bed across the street. The blinds were pulled but he could see their legs intertwined underneath peach sheets. He sighed and it made him happy. He’d gotten a lot of good work done. He’d been writing a couple of pages a night, three or four, but pretty consistently for a good week. He was up to page eighty in the project, and was starting to see where he wanted to take it. It was going to be a revenge/thriller book, probing deep into the mind of this guy who creates his own method of revenge for things he sees and kind of metaphysical wrongs, wounds from a long time ago. Like mental scarring. The plot was shaping up. He worked slow. He’d ended up taking a lot of time away from the bar in the last couple days. The writing, the ideas, were there. He let them come.

            When he saw Johnson Trevor and his girl come home and draw the shades and go right to bed, it made him think of Kit, of course, but tonight he’d remembered only good times. The softness of her body. The smile of her in a new outfit when they would be getting ready to go somewhere. Their favorite songs on the jukebox. Walking quickly down Broadway, holding hands and sometimes splurging on cabs, but mostly running for the subway, he holding the doors for her as she fished for her tokens...

            Times he felt he could do anything. And he could. He thanked them all over again, the street, the noise (I bet it was a good night), the warmth streaming in his vision through streetlight and a winking television set across the street, and he once again felt like he was able to do anything, writing like he always wanted to, strong, getting his life back on track. The pages that piled up on his desk were the proof. Every time he added a page, he was that much closer to finishing what he wanted to accomplish while he was up in Albany. Every one of his issues, so well and equally represented and demolished by that growing stack of paper. He’d print out the work from every session after it was over. He stacked it in front of his printer and used a monstrous green ashtray as a paperweight. And sometimes he just stared at it, smirking as if he were trying to prove a point to it.

            And they stared back most of the time. He’d been seriously working on the thing for about five months now, and though he had eighty pages done, most of the stuff he’d read in copies of Writer’s Digest he’d flipped though suggested that most writers tried, or at least said they tried, to do three pages a day, religiously. He wasn’t sure how many pages that came to, but it had to be a lot more than eighty. And when he factored in that he’d probably end up throwing a bunch of them away, seventy percent of the first forty or so pages being absolute crap, with the plot not figured out and all, Nick would turn these things over and the pages would stare at him deliberately. But it was all torture to him anyway. That’s why he kept the pages piled on his desk. That’s why he decided to commit to the project in the first place. If he could stare it long enough in the face, it would all come back to him eventually, all the fear he felt but could never explain. Out would come a reason.

            Nick put his hands in his pockets and closed the blinds. He strolled to the bathroom, urinated, went to the fridge and retrieved his last beer, opened it, took a sip, returned to his room, lit a cigarette, smoked for a few seconds, opened the blinds back up, sat back down at his desk. The screen saver (WRITE TONIGHT) blinked off and revealed the last paragraph he had been writing.

He breathed in deeply a couple of times, his cigarette propped up in the square glass ashtray, and waited, waited.

                                                                        ~

            But the thing is I know all of this about her because I used to destroy her kind once. I used to prey on the sad eyes, the hopeful soul, give them something to believe in and then, well, not actually pull it away, but kind of just remove it. Slide it away, like tide. It’s a factor of how fast it’s done. If you do it slowly enough, gradual enough, they’ll believe you when you say you don’t know what happened to all of the passion, all of the intensity, because they’ll be just as bewildered as you. Because I used to be as bewildered, you see. I never even realized what I was doing until I had one lay it on me. Then I realized I could never do it again. So now I never go into any woman’s life making them believe it’s something special.

            But I can give it, I know I can, and maybe that is more cruel than anything. And after all, I need it to, to share. To share this gift, whatever it is, love, caring, sexual empathy, whatever. That feeling, that twinge when you see that one person. I’m addicted to it just as much as they are. And you can get so much from it. So much knowledge, so much security, so much love, even if it goes away you still hold those things, don’t you? Still can always learn from them? So take someone who goes into a relationship (not necessarily lover potential but in this case yes), knowing beforehand that it is doomed, knowing beforehand what would come out of it, knowing beforehand what exactly the end result will be, and so on. What on earth could possess that person to go into it? I know I’ll fall in love because of all the memories it will bring back, not memories of her but memories of feelings and how good they were; I know she’ll fall in love because what she wants to hear is exactly what I want to say anyway, and she’s waiting, and I’m waiting, and the world is waiting. So why on earth would I choose her as my route to get what I need to get out of this situation? I can get the money and the way out without her. Well, not completely without her but I needn’t get involved with her to the extent that it will happen. That I’m going to let it happen. So, why, why?

            Because with the stakes as high as they are, it would not be worth it to me to get the prize without somehow having an emotional involvement in the whole thing. I only wanted this city to be a way station for me, somewhere I could go and rest my head for awhile until it became clear what I had to do next. All these jobs, all these friends, what else could have happened? I ended up building the foundation I was never able to get in those other places. I have a bank account all of a sudden. I never had a bank account before. Sure, this one is under a fake name but I use it all the same. Hell, I depend on it to be there. That never happened. And I finally figure a way to take a small time gang’s loot using this junk runner as a pawn, this guy who’s got nothing to do with anything (so I suspect) and I have to drag his new woman into it, why?

            Out of all the whores this guy has had over, this is the only one that waits for him, the only one that does not go through his pants while he’s not home, the only one that’s been over more than three times. Twenty-nine, tomorrow. But the guy will simply not believe what I’m going to have to set up for him to believe if he thinks everything is peachy with the woman. But he doesn’t even know what he’s doing to her, all the times he’s with other women, all the times he’s gone and she doesn’t know why. He’s killing her. I’ve seen that same look too many times. I know it. And maybe this time I can do something about it. So I guess the why is why else: one more time. Maybe this time it will be different.

                                                                        ~

            Friday. She was to be on her own for the first time. Caitlyn was kind of embarrassed in the back of the bus, because even though she was wearing a jacket (and it was soon going to get too hot for this, she thought. just like last summer), she knew that she was wearing her uniform underneath. It sucked too bad to go to work in regular clothes when she knew she would just have to change anyway, and who knows what the bathrooms would look like, given that there were not separate bathrooms for employees and customers. So then she’d have to change and stash her nice clothes somewhere, knowing that they would somehow get dirty because fryer grease was ubiquitous in the Royal Burger. It was always the worst part of the job for her, wearing the uniform. And even though she knew the supervisor position meant less work and therefore, less grease around, she figured it would just be easier all around to just suck it up, be seen in the uniform (nobody gives a shit anyway, she thought) and get it over with. Granted, the new uniform she had was a little more respectable (a white shirt, sleeved, buttoned, with a smallish version on the Royal Burger logo on the left breast), and she could even wait until work to put the tie on, but it was all the same.

            How much longer? she thought as she pulled the cord to signal the CDTA bus to stop. She knew that when she took the position of supervisor she was expected to stay at least through the summer, but then what? She didn’t want to stay and everyone knew that (even management, which is why, aside from her being obviously the most qualified, they offered her the position) but she had no real motivation to try and get another job. After all, the supervisor tag would net her another dollar an hour, bringing her weekly paycheck up substantially and that would allow her to actually start saving some money. But she didn’t know what to save for. She couldn’t leave Albany, not yet, not with her brother flipped out somewhere and her family in chaos. She thought she might want to save for a car, but that would be more expenses, tie her down with payments, and not really help her out all that much.

            For the meantime she just wanted to work the summer away, save up a bunch, and watch for developments. And her job was instantly more respectable because now instead of answering the question ‘What do you do?’ with Royal Burger, she could answer supervisor at Royal Burger. So in the end it was a tradeoff. They wanted her there for the summer and to get that they threw money and a title and a less hideous uniform at her. And she was fine with that.

            It was easily the warmest day of spring in Albany. The daylight was brilliant and it fell on Caitlyn’s face in a glow. She squinted with one eye across the street towards the restaurant. The first person she saw was Brittany Gorgeous, in the parking lot. It was Brittany’s last day in Albany.  Her boyfriend, a cheeky prep boy from Malta who somehow became the daytime weatherman for channel 13, and now was the daytime weatherman for channel 4 in New Orleans, was waiting in the car. Brittany saw Caitlyn and stopped to wave. Caitlyn jogged up to her.

            “Brittany!”

            “Cait!”

            They met and embraced. Caitlyn peeked in the car and saw Brittany’s boyfriend, Randall Cox, waiting patiently in the passenger’s seat, holding a medium Royal Burger cup which he sipped from occasionally. He smiled at Caitlyn from under his sunglasses and shot her with his finger.

            “You were going to leave without saying bye, you bitch?” Caitlyn said.

            “Get the fuck out of here. I didn’t even work today. I had to drop my uniform off and pick up my check. I knew when you had to work.”

            “Yeah, nice try. You got lucky. Good timing.”

            “Yeah, well here we are anyway,” Brittany said. “It’s fate.”

            “So you are officially gone? As of now.”

            “As of tomorrow morning. Ten-thirty A.M., Albany International Airport.”

            “Ho-lee shit,” Caitlyn said, her voice a bit proud. “Unbelievable. God, Brit. Amazing. I’m really going to miss you being around.”

            “You have my e-mail and my new address, so don’t get all weepy on me. And don’t fucking stay here too long. It’s an okay job, but it will rot your soul.”

            “Not a fucking chance in the world I’m staying here past the New Year.”

            “You better not. And keep in touch, okay?” Brittany said.

            “Of course,” Caitlyn said.

            “Good girl,” Brittany said. “So how’s everything else? How’s Nick?”

            Caitlyn rolled her eyes and shrugged. “I haven’t seen him in about a week. He’s keeping busy with the bar I guess. Pretty much the only times I see him are when I go down there, to Last Call.”

            “So, nothing?”

            “Nothing yet. He’s interesting, though. And he writes.”

            “Any good?”

            Caitlyn gave a weak so-so with her hand.

            “All writers are shit anyway.”

            “What do you want? He’s cute and he tries.”

            “Eh.” Brittany shrugged, putting her arm around Caitlyn. “Nobody ever tries hard enough. But good luck, Cait. With everything.” She stepped back and walked around the front of the car. She stopped and looked up briefly, as if remembering something. “Wait a minute,” she said. “How’s that gig with the band? The cover art thing.”

            “I got their last album and the guys are in a new band now. Turk has already promised me the next album.”

            Brittany nodded. “I remember Turk. He’s a good guy. I liked Cast Iron a lot. It sucks that they’re not together.”

            Caitlyn shook her head. She looked inside the car. Randall was staring at Brittany’s stomach and sipping patiently at his soda. “Man, this shit is better. I promise you.”

            “Do they pay you?”

            “One hundred and a ‘design and art’ byline.”

            “Not bad. You should keep that shit up. I really dig your work.” She raised a fist in the air. “Power!” She laughed and put on a set of mirrored sunglasses that had been hanging off of her tanktop. “Protect this shell,” she growled. “I love that shit!”

             She blew Caitlyn a kiss and then she got in her car. Randall waved. Caitlyn waved back to them as they pulled out of the parking lot, Brittany honking her horn. Sarah Adelman, aka Brittany Gorgeous, six years for Royal Burger, three as supervisor, Albany, New York born and raised, leaving New England for the first time to live in New Orleans, Louisiana with her weatherman boyfriend. And promising to get a job besides food service. Maybe something with a desk, she’d said. Caitlyn smoked and watched the car until it disappeared, until the desperate sun’s glare on their back windshield merged with the others stopped at a light about a half-mile down Western Avenue. She checked her watch, set to the place’s timeclock, to see how long she had until she had to punch in for her first shift as supervisor.