RL's Dream

Twenty-Two

All Kiki saw was a crazy-quilt pattern of bright lights and hard I things. Asphalt, concrete, dried vomit in the street, hydrants, lampposts, and droves of wild honking cars. Randy supported her on the way up the stairs. She knew she shouldn’t have been yelling, that he wouldn’t have dropped her. But she couldn’t help it. It didn’t matter, because nobody came to her aid; nobody called the police.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, Randy?” she shouted when he sat her down on the bed. She tried to get up to go at him but her right leg slid out to the side and she went to the ground. “Get the fuck away!”

Randy backed away toward the door. Kiki’s rage was so strong that there was foam at the corners of her mouth. Her yelling and screaming sounded more like a dog barking than a human being. Randy was all the more scared because of her lack of control over her legs. She’d try to get up and then fall back to the floor, all the time yelling and coughing and spitting foam.

She watched him back out of the door and shut it against her pleas. He didn’t want to get near her. The fool! Didn’t he understand how bad she felt? How hard things were? Didn’t he know that she needed, needed... needed him to push her arms down and hold her so down.

Fez picked up the turquoise receiver on the first ring. “Yeah.”

“Fez?”

“You got it?”

“Hey, man. I don’t want you tellin’ anybody where you got this,” Roger said.

“I need that address, Roger.”

“Don’t you have the call sheet?”

“They don’t have her address on the call sheet.”

There was a long pause on the line. Fez held the receiver close to his mouth so Roger could hear the angry breath.

Roger gave him the address of the Beldin Arms. He said, “Don’t tell anybody that I...” and Fez hung up the phone.

Fez snorted once and turned off the lamp by smashing it with the back of his hand.

Soupspoon woke up to an exquisite pang that moved in a circle around his hip. He raised his head with a sudden jerk, eyes wide, mouth open to answer a call. Chevette slept snuggled in the crack where the cushions met the back of their makeshift bed. He got to his feet in agony, the smell of burnt wax and fresh baby in the air. Light from a faraway sun found its way to windows buried down the ventilation shaft, barely illuminated the empty wine bottles on the table. The hazy gray floor spread before him like a vast morning swamp to an old brown god.

His throat was dry. So dry that it felt as if no amount of water could quench it. Like he had died and awakened, a corpse on judgment day. Fear prickled his forehead and shoulders. He hobbled to the sink, where he guzzled water, like when he was a boy and again like the last time he was dying.

He blundered by Hamela’s bed to the bathroom that connected the child’s room to her mother’s. While he stood there staring down into the toilet he heard a high-pitched but masculine “Unghh!” from Sono’s bedroom. A little later a baby cried. Sono laughed and then said something that he couldn’t make out.

When Soupspoon got back to the kitchen he took his guitar from its case and sat down at the table to practice chords along the frets.

“Uncle?”

“Yeah?”

Chevette had a blanket wrapped around her. She kissed Soupspoon on the cheek before sitting down in the chair next to him.

“Cain’t sleep?” she asked.

“I get up early.”

Chevette crossed her long thin legs so they stuck out between the fold in the blanket.

Soupspoon lit a candle and watched it flicker until it became sure. Chevette watched the little fire too. Soon they were looking at each other over the flame.

“You hate me, uncle?”

“Hate you? Why I’ma hate you?”

“I’ont know,” she said. “It just might be that you think that it was wrong for me to be wit’ you last night. You might think that I was like a whore or sumpin’.”

“Is that what you think?” Soupspoon asked.

“No.”

“So why would I?”

“I got to go to the bathroom,” she answered.

She got up and walked away quickly, making the sound of marsh breezes with the blanket trailing along the floor.

When she came back she was wearing a plaid skirt and a green sweater. Her face was set hard but he could see the same friendly girl inside the scowl.

“I just liked you because you was nice an’ you had on nice clothes,” she said.” ‘Cause you was playin’ good music but you was still friendly wit’ my friends. It’s just that you was nice an’ I was drinkin’. You know I don’t usually drink — an’ I never take drugs.”

“But you sorry ’bout you’n me last night?” he asked.

“It’s just that I don’t hardly know you, uncle. I mean there you are...” She stopped herself from calling him old. “An’ here I am. I don’t want you to think bad about me.”

Soupspoon waited a long minute in the candlelight. Then he said, “Can we start over?”

“What you mean?”

“I mean that we just forget about yesterday. Yesterday never happened.”

“You mean like you don’t even know me?”

“Almost. I mean that you know me but that you don’t owe me nuthin’. Maybe you might like me if I’m nice but nuthin’ says that you got to care.”

“An’ you gonna be nice?”

“I’d like to buy you lunch this afternoon at Ayer’s American Café. You know, over near St. Mark’s Place.”

“I know where it is.”