RL's Dream

Four

He awoke to the smell of whiskey over lemongrass; remembering the small bare breasts of the redhead, Kiki, and how she came to bed in just underpants — a big hospital bandage on her left side.

“How are ya, honey?” Her speech was slurred from the sour mash.

He could barely nod.

“Motherfuckin’ bastards.” She propped herself up on one elbow and looked down on him. “They don’t give two shits ’bout what happens to us. They don’t care.”

When she bounced around to get her place on the pillow, Soupspoon could feel his bones jostling.

“You hurt, Soupspoon? Don’t worry, I’m not gonna jump around anymore. I’m not gonna let anything happen to you. Tomorrow I’m gonna get Randy, I mean Ran-dall” — she pronounced the name in a southern impression of an English accent — “and we’re gonna get you to a doctor.”

Soupspoon saw the girl’s ghost hovering halfway next to her like an afterimage on a snowy TV. He wanted to go to sleep; he wanted to die with no pain. But instead he beckoned Kiki to his lips.

She butted his head leaning forward in the bouncy bed.

“What?”

“That your boyfriend?”

Kiki’s grin was toothy, half-wise.

“Why?” She leaned back toward him — a child playing games in bed after the lights are turned out.

“ ’Cause I don’t wanna be layin’ up in his girlfriend’s bed.”

Putting her cheek to his and whispering into his ear, she said, “Don’t worry, baby. I fuck him sometimes, but Randy don’t own me.”

The whole of his life Soupspoon had been around hard-drinking, hard-talking women, but he never got used to it.

“Anyway,” Kiki said, “he’s not like you. He’s just a wannabe; wannabe white. He says he’s South American and Caucasian North African, that means a light-skinned Arab.”

Kiki leaned over to reach across Soupspoon, her pea-sized nipple poking at his eye. When she heaved back she had the whiskey bottle and swigged at it from the neck.

“When he comes up here I tell him that I wanna see his hard black dick.” She sucked her tongue in a way she must have thought sexy. “You should see all the changes he goes through. You should, see him.”

The young woman was all of a sudden sad. She swigged down another drink and leaned across to put the bottle back.

“He goes down there to Pace University to be a stockbroker. Wants to play polo with the peckerwoods down there. He told me he wants me to be his wife so we could hang out at some fuckin’ country clubs where they got fish eggs an’ fuckin’ Nazi polka music... He thinks he’s somethin’ just ’cause he wannabe. But he ain’t no more than these wild nigger boys roamin’ up and down, up an’ down.” For a moment the girl was lost in thought. “Like dogs.”

When he sighed, Soupspoon didn’t know if it was from the pain in his leg or from the pain he felt from that girl.

“What’s wrong, honey?”

“Hip.”

“Your hip?”

“Mm. Yeah,” he whispered.

“Is it better on your back?”

Soupspoon nodded but he didn’t know.

“Is it your right side? Here, let’s get you up on your left side and then you could lean back against me.”

Kiki moved him gently and molded her body right behind his. He could feel her alcoholic heat work its way down into his bones. It felt good.

“That’s okay, baby,” she whispered. “Don’t you worry. Nothin’s gonna happen to you. I’m here. Shh, I’m here.”

Soupspoon let himself lay back against the hot girl. He listened to her words and felt her light touch on his ear and forehead.

And he felt okay for the first time in a very long time. The closeness shaking loose the loneliness that had been his life for years.

Now he was alone in the big purple bed. His head full of dreams about catfish frying and juke joint dancing and women laughing open-mouthed while he played his red guitar. Only it didn’t feel like a dream. It felt real. More real than this strange bed.

The scent of sour mash was in the air. There, on the dresser next to the bed, was the half-empty fifth of Jack Daniel’s.

Crackling pain moved around in his leg.

If I could sit up then I won’t die this mornin’, he said to himself.

It felt as if there was a clawing lion digging in from behind, into his heart and head, but Soupspoon sat up. By bending over double and holding on to the side of the bed he could stand. Taking baby steps, he made it to the far end and rested.

A tune came into his head.

The five steps to the chair and table left Soupspoon on his knees. He made it into the chair, trying to remember the chord he played behind that song. It wasn’t in his mind but he was sure that his fingers remembered.

Through the window he could see three pigeons on the clothesline that stretched across the street. Two together and one apart. He smiled at them and rapped his knuckles on the tabletop — one-two, one.

A ruckus erupted in the hall and the door flung open. Soupspoon expected to see Nate and Tony again, but it was the girl. Kiki came in breathing hard, pushing an ancient wooden wheelchair. It must have been fifty years old. All cherry wood except for the cracked wicker back and seat. The back was high and the wheels were surrounded by thick rubber strips. There was a big lever brake on it and big flat armrests like on a reclining chair.

“Mrs. Manetti loaned it to us.” She had a brilliant smile for him. “What do you want for breakfast, Soup?”

He smiled and hunched his shoulders for her.

He was amazed again. All the years he lived as a poor man among poor people and it always happened like this. You might know somebody for twenty years and never know their first name or what their feet looked like. But then one day something happens and somebody you never even thought of is there in your life closer than family. You know their smell and their temper.

That’s how it was with Robert Johnson.

You looked up one day and there he was singing and acting crazy. He told you about far-off places in the world and played music that was stranger yet. He made songs that were deep down in you — and then you looked up again and he was gone. He took something of yours that you didn’t even know you had; something your mother and your father never knew about. And taking it away he left you with something missing — and that something was better than anything else that ever you had.

Kiki fried canned spaghetti in leftover bacon fat and made sandwiches from it with dark toast. Soupspoon drank mint tea. He watched her down a shot of whiskey.

“What you lookin’ at?” The girl’s voice was hard. “You don’t know what I’ve been through. This is the only thing keeping me together right now.”

She stared into his eyes until Soupspoon lowered his gaze.

He’d been stared down by angry women before.

Hard lovin’ comes wit’ hard knuckles, his Uncle Fitzhew used to say.

Kiki lightened up after that. She didn’t mind helping Soupspoon with his toilet. She helped him on with his wedding suit and put him in the chair. Randy came soon after, and together they lowered him step by step to the bottom floor.

Soupspoon looked around at the gray-green walls of painted plaster and at the cracked granite floors. There was a sixty-watt lightbulb at each narrow landing. But even in the dim light he could make out the dirty corners.

Almost thirty years in that building and he’d never been above the first floor. The walls echoed from Kiki and Randy groaning. He had the feeling of being a child; carried about and wheeled around.

“You okay, Mr. Wise?” Randy asked.

Soupspoon nodded and smiled in the gawky boy’s face.

Arab my butt.

On the first floor they went past Soupspoon’s apartment door. It was open on the empty living room. The floor was bare and unswept; even the shades had been taken off the windows. Twenty-eight years it had been his home and now it wasn’t anything. He couldn’t remember how his things fit in there.

There was already graffiti across the wall slapped on with emerald-green paint:

Soupspoon didn’t know the language but he knew what it meant. It said that he could never live in his own house again.

Outside a dog was lifting his leg against the big yellow sofa. The cushions were gone, somebody’s bed now. The bed was still there, so filthy that Soupspoon hoped they’d pass by quickly so that no one would make fun of him. The rosewood dresser was half the way down the block, shattered.

Kiki put a blanket around him and they went to Avenue A and up by Tompkins Square Park.

Soupspoon watched his breath form into frost on the blanket.

They cut west when they got to Twelfth Street. Long barren walls and an occasional drug dealer was all there was.

“I told you that I tried calling you, didn’t I, Kiki?” Randy said at the beginning of the block.

“Uh-huh.”

“But then I remembered that you always unplug the phone, so I called your job too.”

“Yeah? What’d they say?”

“That you quit.”

“What?”

“Have you called them?”

“Not yet.”

“But why do you think they say you quit?”

“I don’t know,” Kiki answered. “I didn’t wanna call’em when I was flat on my butt in the hospital bed.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I just didn’t.”

“But suppose they fired you?”

“What can I do about that? I didn’t call. I can’t go back and change that now.”

“But you should have called them. You should have.”

Kiki stopped suddenly. The big wooden chair lurched so that Soupspoon had to bite his lip to keep from crying out. She turned with the chair to face her sometime boyfriend.

“Get away from here, Randy,” Kiki said in a voice so hushed that Soupspoon could hardly hear.

“Aw com’on, honey.”

“Get your ass away from me.”

“I gave up my spot to help you today. I skipped classes for this.”

Soupspoon could hear the cold hatred in the girl’s breathing. Her ragged silence carried on the cold air.

“Damn!” Randy said after half a minute.

Soupspoon watched him walk back the way they had come.

Then Kiki yanked the chair around and they were moving again.

They went for blocks without her saying a word. Past the big yellow video store and the Korean market and florist. At Broadway was a large bookstore that specialized in “monster books” and toys.

They moved quickly down the street after that, Kiki bouncing the chair on its hard rubber wheels up and down the curbs. Soupspoon closed his eyes. A large spike was being driven into the bone, cracking it wide open. He wanted to yell, but his throat was closed. He wanted to run, but he could barely hold on to the chair...

“What?” Kiki shouted. “What?”

Soupspoon opened his eyes and saw that they had stopped moving. He had turned halfway around in the chair and grabbed Kiki by the arm. The hot spike ran down his right leg. She looked like demon with her eyes opened wide and her brows deeply furrowed. He could hear the bone-cracking gale of hate. “What?”

But when Kiki saw his face he knew that she saw his suffering. She stroked his forehead and turned him around and got down on her knees next to the chair. She fussed with the blankets, pulling them up around his neck again, and then she kissed him over his right eye.

From then on they rode slowly and Kiki went out of her way to find the special ramps they built for people in wheelchairs. They went across University and Fifth and Sixth. Finally they reached Seventh Avenue and turned left. Kiki wheeled Soupspoon up a wide ramp and through two wide glass doors that were held open by a black man dressed all in white.

The sudden heat made Soupspoon sleepy. His eyes felt scratchy and he started to nod. He had the feeling of motion, though, and he could hear voices. Kiki’s voice, petulant and on the way to getting loud. Another woman was talking too.

“I’m sorry but you’ll have to wait.”

Then something about a doctor. But it was the smell of rubbing alcohol that told him he was in a hospital. He was so tired that he fell asleep listening to them argue and bicker. The choppy voices worked their way down into Soupspoon’s sleepy mind, taking him back to earlier arguments.

Ruby and Inez sit out on the front porch arguing about politics and recipes and what so-and-so said at the store last Thursday.

His parents and brother were already dead. Influenza tore through their small shack, leaving a five-year-old boy just barely alive. He staggered away from that death too, like he had from the shelter. And he was saved then also. Because if Ruby and Inez hadn’t taken him in he would have starved or gone insane from loneliness.

Ruby wore a blue cotton dress that had rough yellow flowers printed on it; Inez wore pants like a man and she smoked a corncob pipe. Inez kept a praying mantis around the house to eat pesky bugs. The big green walking stick could often be seen riding on Inez’s shoulder or striding down her arm. When he was a boy little Atwater thought that walking sticks were the souls of saints that protected them all from harm.

Ruby and Inez were his only family, but he wasn’t blood to them. They weren’t blood to each other. But just good friends that lived together and that took care of him because they needed a child to order around.

Soupspoon felt a sharp jolt in his hip that opened his eyes. He saw a little blond boy, less than two, sitting on the floor with a red-and-blue ball between his legs. He was looking at that ball like God gazing at the world. Soupspoon imagined rivers and trees sprouting under that scrutiny. A whole world of buffalo and dinosaurs, flowers as big as your head and cold water deep and clean.

Asleep again, with lion claws digging into his hip. The darkness of half-sleep became bright sun shining through the plate glass. The baby yowled and Soupspoon roused to look at him again. A pinched-faced white woman was holding him in her lap. Next to her sat a dark man, probably Latin. His left arm was wrapped in a shirt deeply stained with blood. He was nodding off too. The baby struggled to get free. He was looking at that ball like it was his last chance. And Soupspoon wanted to get it for him. He wanted to get up out of his chair and go get that ball. He wanted to cry like that baby.

“Mr. Wise?”

A young man, younger even than the cops from yesterday. He was dressed in doctor white, not orderly white. He was short and smiling. Behind him Kiki looked worried.

“Can you talk, Mr. Wise? Can you make words?”

Soupspoon shook his head, hunched his shoulders, and smiled.

“Well, your friend here here says that you’ve had a pretty tough time of it.” The doctor turned to Kiki and said, “Why don’t you bring him along?”

They went through double swinging doors into a hall where nurses and doctors went from patient to patient, between aisles of sick people loitering in their beds. It was a long hall filled with flat tables that were separated by raspy plastic curtains. At the far end of the hall was a wide door that burst open suddenly. Four men carrying two stretchers rushed in, followed by more men. When they rushed past Soupspoon, he saw the bloodied face of one of the patients. He could tell by the angle of the eye and the loose lips that the man was already dead. He tried to see the other one, but they moved too fast for him.

“A-M-P thirty-one,” a paramedic barked out. Then they were gone. With his voice the way it was, Soupspoon couldn’t even whisper a prayer.

“You should always say a prayer when you see a dead body,” Uncle Fitzhew used to say. “You know they souls be all confused when they die. Yo’ li’l words might set’em straight fo’heaven.”

Soupspoon always respected the tall gravedigger “uncle.” He was no more blood than Inez or Ruby, but he came by once in a while to drink wine and play dominoes for nickels. He had the biggest thing in Cougar Bluff, everybody knew it. White men used to ask him would he take a dollar to show it off, but he wouldn’t, “not for no white man.”

“Open wide, Mr. Wise,” the doctor said. He poked a popsicle stick down his throat and felt his neck. Then he pulled Soupspoon’s eye wide and shone a light into it. He took something and shoved it in his ear while looking at a red-lit panel. Numbers jumped around until they stopped at 102.5.

The doctor and Kiki helped him off with his jacket and shirt, shoes and socks. The doctor listened to his chest and felt his skin. He looked at his fingers and toes and at the sores along his ankles. Then he sat in a metal chair at Soupspoon’s side.

“My name is Mussar, Mr. Wise. Alan Mussar. I’m a resident here.” The young doctor smiled with his mouth, but his eyes looked sad. Soupspoon wondered how a man could work in a place where they dragged in dead people every day.

“Are you a relative?”

“A friend of, of his daughter’s, doctor. We just found him at the shelter yesterday. They hadn’t talked in a long time and she didn’t know what he’d come to. She had to go to work and I brought him over. Is he real sick?”

“Well, there’s infection in his throat and he’s got a fever. His glands are okay. But we need X-rays for the hip.” The doctor stopped a moment and looked closely at Kiki.

“Does his daughter have health insurance?”

“Sure she does. She works for the city, they have full family coverage.”

“Do you have her card?”

“No, but I could go get it. I mean, by tomorrow I could.”

The doctor took a prescription pad from the shelf behind him and jotted something down, and then he took another piece of paper and wrote a short note, which he signed along with his phone number.

“Take this,” he said, handing her both pieces of paper. “And fill it at a pharmacy. Bring your friend to the University Hospital. Make sure you have his insurance cards. They won’t admit him in this hospital unless you can prove that he can pay.”

“Thank you, doctor,” Kiki drawled. “She’ll get him there tomorrow morning.”

“He’s got a bad infection in his throat,” the doctor said. “Warm liquids, salt gargle, and this prescription four times a day. And,” he said, taking a handful of small aluminum packets from a drawer, “give him these for any pain he might feel.”

“Yes, doctor,” Kiki said, taking the dozen or so packages.

Soupspoon wondered why the doctor didn’t talk to him. He was the sick man.

Outside Kiki was singing. It was late afternoon and warmer than the morning or the day before. They stopped at a deli and got chocolate chip cookies and apple juice. Kiki kept saying, “We did it. We did it, Soupspoon Wise.”