“He’s dead.”
Sherry was filing her nails and for a moment, Juan sat absolutely still then grabbed my wrist, demanded,
“What is this... this sheet?”
I stared at his fingers, the nails bitten to the quick, said,
“You want to let go of my wrist... amigo?.”
He released it, sat back and I said,
“He didn’t suffer.”
What a crock that is, as if it gives some sort of closure. A bleakness filled Juan’s face then his eyes were hardass, asked,
“How?”
“An accident.”
He began flexing his fingers, cracking the joints, Sherry said,
“Yo, guys, lighten up.”
Without looking at her, he said,
“Shut up, bitch.”
Then to me,
“You are his friend, you watch his back, how can he muerto, dead?”
I could do hardass, welcomed it; he pushed, I’d push back, said,
“Shit happens.”
Just like that, he let it go, shrugged, made the sign of the cross, asked,
“Tell me your plans, amigo?.”
Had fully intended laying out my Tucson project, meeting him now, I way backtracked, lied,
“Thought I’d hang out, you know, like chill.”
Before he could respond, his cell trilled, he flipped it open with such casualness, I knew he’d practiced it a hundred times in the mirror, went,
“Diga me.”
Listened, then followed with a volley of spitfire Spanish, chewing the words in a flurry of facial grimaces I could only half understand. Went like this:
“Dinero, mucho dinero, trabajo, carambe, muy bueno.”
And a litany of obscenities. Slammed the phone on the table, shouting,
“Maricón.”
His eyes were crazed and he jumped to his feet, said,
“Amigo, gotta vamoose, some business to fix.”
He pronounced it bidness. I said,
“No problem.”
He indicated Sherry, not looking at her, asked,
“Can you see my woman gets home, maybe catch a cab?”
And he rooted in his skin tight-jeans, spilled a mess of bills on the table, said,
“We hook up mañana, have us a time.”
He was reaching out to make that black gesture, knuckles touching, then palms over and more cool shit, I ignored it, said,
“You bet.”
We all looked at his palm dangling in mid air then he recovered, leaned over to Sherry, got his tongue half way down her throat. Took a time as he made slavering noises, as if he were eating her, then withdrew, made a gun of his finger, cocked the thumb, said,
“See you, slick.”
After he’d gone, I said,
“Bidness?”
She was applying lipstick, a shiny pale gloss, said,
“Thinks he’s a player, grew up in the goddamn Bronx.”
“And is he... a player?”
She adjusted her skirt, not that there was a whole lot to fix, but gave us both the opportunity to stare at her legs, then she said,
“He’s a goddamn prick is what he is.”
No argument there.
“Sherry is what Connemara men drink when they
give up booze for Lent, they feel it’s a true
penance.”
Sherry was born as Mary Ellen Dubcheck in the type of mining town made famous by The Deer Hunter. When she finally saw the movie, she was convinced, first, they’d made it in her hometown, and second, she thought Christopher Walken was the hottest guy on the planet.
The term dysfunctional is too mild for the family she had — seriously fucked is closer. Her father was a shadowy figure who beat her, then just upped and disappeared. Laying the seeds of abandonment rage in the young girl, for the rest of her life she’d be acutely aware of men attempting to leave her. Her mother was the trailer trash of Gretchen Wilson songs, the proverbial redneck woman.
What Sherry remembered of her town was the thick pallor of grit, dust, black smoke that hung over the landscape like the worst omen. It got in your eyes, hair, clothes, and no amount of scrubbing would erase it. When the steelworks were closed, a blacker depression settled on the place. The men, drank, fought and hunted. The atmosphere was rife with hurt, hatred, resentment, and all of it laid its curse on the girl.
One brother, Lee, a year older, interfered with her when she was twelve, and when she told her mother, she got the beating of a lifetime with the words,
“It’s what men do, stop whining or there’s more whipping...”
Lee was found dead from a gunshot wound to the back of the head in the woods. Hunting accident they said. Sherry’s mother thought otherwise but said nothing. Their dog, a collie named Rusty, was also the victim of a hunting accident. Rusty had hated the young girl with the unerring instinct that canines have for the very essence of malevolence. Her mother packed Sherry off to New Orleans when the girl was fourteen. To a friend who ran a whorehouse. Sherry learned all she needed to know for survival, sex equals power equals violence. A combination of that trinity would run her life from then on. Having been schooled in the very essentials of survival and manipulation, Sherry lit out for New York when she was seventeen. Arriving at Port Authority, like the thousands of runaways and prey who arrive daily, she was hit on by one of the waiting friendly predators. He sure dialled the wrong number. His usual gig being to get the girl to a house, then turn her out to a line of men. In a New Orleans drawl, Sherry asked if he’d like a little suck before they left the station?
They found him in the urinal, his pants around his ankles and his dick in his mouth, a cathouse variation on the blow job, his wallet missing.
Sherry got a job as a dancer in the East Village and pulled down the bucks with a wild routine that involved an imaginary dog she called Rusty and sometimes, for private customers, she called the dog Lee.
How she hooked up with Juan, she spotted his thick wedge of green from the stage and within a week, he’d set her up in a cosy studio. His use of heroin meant the sex was sporadic but he kept her around as she was so sharp. Called her his private dancer. Sherry loved the big city, she got her own supply of drugs set up and had plenty of green. She sent her mother a fat package with half a Ben Franklin and the words,
“I left the other half in the woods, like men do.”
Juan had offered her some crank but she was too slick to go that road, she had a nice buzz on a daily basis from the dope she’d been reared on in New Orleans — Percodan — she dearly loved her percs. Mix in a little crystal for variation and a girl was as happy as a pig in a basket. She worked on her accent, learning to vary it with down home licks and the harsh vowels of the Lower East Side.
Scams...
Nothing she liked better than a good one. House of Games was her favourite movie, with the line, “one born every minute and two to take ’em.” She stumbled into a rich seam almost by accident.
Forty-second Street, cleaned up and tourist attraction though it still had enough sleaze to make her feel comfortable. And if you hung out close to Port Authority, she saw most of them go down. It was a master class in the con. Became her custom to take her latte, grande, with vanilla lick, in the Starbucks on the corner opposite. Plus, one of the geeks, calling himself a barista, had the hots for her and threw in a Danish free. Turned out the nerd had a little habit going and so she established another minor connection for her medication, never could have enough sources. Juan, though not stingy with his dope, sometimes threatened to cut her off, keep her in line, the usual macho bullshit.