RUSSELL STOPPED about four feet from Frankie on the second underground platform of the Park Street MBTA station. “All right,” he said, “I’m here. We going out there or what?”
Frankie leaned against one of the red and white pillars. “Depends,” he said.
“Don’t depend on me,” Russell said. “I been up since quarter five. I’m all beat to shit. And I also, I got a chance to get laid if I don’t go out there.”
“Don’t people get laid at night any more?” Frankie said. “My sister, we’re kids, you couldn’t keep Sandy inna house at night if she was tied up. Now she’s out Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons. I been there five weeks, she’s never home them days.”
“Must be a fireman,” Russell said, “night guy inna fire station. Young guy, too, she’s not going out, weekends.”
“Or a fuckin’ cop,” Frankie said. “It’d be the same thing with a cop. I said to her: ‘None of my business, Sandy, I just hope you’re not rolling around with some fuckin’ cop, is all.’ She looks at me. ‘Why?’ she says. ‘What’ve you guys got that cops haven’t?’ I pity that kid.”
“You oughta pity yourself,” Russell said.
“I do,” Frankie said. “She never had a clean shot, though. She always got around pretty good, I don’t mean that. She just never hadda clean shot.”
“Nobody ever had a clean shot,” Russell said. “What the fuck else is new? I was talking to this girl, she wants me to come over there this after. I said to her, look, I hadda be some place. What’s the matter, tonight? She’s gotta work. She gets off late. I don’t care. I been up late myself before. She’s a nurse. She says: ‘Look, I’m gonna wash old men’s asses and everything all day. Then I’m gonna be out on my feet. You think I wanna get laid, after that? That what you think? I don’t.’ ”
“That oughta be something,” Frankie said. “I can just see what kind of broad she’s gonna be, you can screw off an ad inna paper. Beautiful. Probably got a couple handfuls of broken glass in there.”
“Look,” Russell said, “you ought to know. I was pounding sand up my ass almost four years. I would’ve fucked a snake, I could’ve got somebody, hold it for me. These broads, okay, you wouldn’t want to rape them if you saw them, you know? But they got the fuckin’ plumbing.”
A badly coordinated heavyset man appeared on the southerly platform across the tracks. He wore white coveralls and carried a blue plastic pail. He turned his back and stared at the tile wall. He put the pail down. He put his hands on his hips. On the wall in red spray paint were irregular letters eighteen inches tall. They read: SOUTHIE EATS IT. He stooped and removed a steel brush and a can of solvent from the pail.
“I wished I could look at things like that,” Frankie said. “I can’t seem to get my mind on anything. I thought, I used to think, boy, if I ever get out of this fuckin’ place, they just better get all the women out of town that day, you know? But you know what I do? I sleep all the time. You were to just leave me alone, I think that’s really what I’d do, the way I feel right now at least. Just sleep and sleep and sleep. That’s why, this thing, I dunno how it is, what he’s got in mind. I admit, he’s kind of a crazy bastard. But he’s at least got something in mind, you know? I haven’t. He come out and the day he come out, he was looking around. And I keep thinking, it’s all I do, Jesus, if I could just get some money. I could go out and live like I was a regular human being. But I can’t, I haven’t come up with anything, no way to get no money. Dean, my brother-in-law, he’s not a bad guy, basically, he don’t say anything. You know what he does? He reads catalogues. All them catalogues, come inna mail? Son of a bitch, he works, he goes to work at noon, noon till eight-thirty, down the gas station. He comes out, he reads catalogues. Fuckin’ electronics catalogues. And she’s, he’s down there, busting his hump, up to his ass in oil and stuff, she’s out fuckin’ some guy. So I’m sleeping on his couch and I’m drinking his beer, he don’t know me. He’s from Maiden. Where’s he know me from? They got married, I was inna can. But he still, he tells me, ‘Look, don’t tell Sandy, all right? Because you tell her and she’s probably gonna start wondering, how I find this out. But you probably wanna get your ashes hauled, there’s this broad I know, she works, her husband thinks she gets off at midnight, I guess. She gets off about ten.’ So I say to him, well, I don’t tell him, I was inna big hurry for names, Sandy’d be the one I’d ask, he don’t need that kind of favor from me. So I just say, I appreciate it. But I haven’t got no place to go, where I can take a broad, you know? I haven’t got no car. I got less’n thirty bucks. I mean, what am I gonna do?
“So he says,” Frankie said, “he says him and Sandy’ll go out, I can use their place. Yeah, and probably one of the kids isn’t gonna get up inna middle of the night and come out, see how come I’m making so much noise, getting laid onna couch. It’s not gonna work, and that’s it, it just won’t work. I got to get some dough and I can’t, this thing John’s got, it’s the only thing I got in front of me right now. I got to listen to the guy.”
“Shit,” Russell said, “listen to him. I’m willing to listen to him. He just didn’t want to say anything in front of me that I could hear. Fuckin’ guy, he don’t like me. Okay. But I’m not gonna go around and check myself into something I don’t even know what I’m getting into or anything. I did that before. I’m not doing that again. This thing I’m doing, I can do that. It’s probably gonna take me longer, get what I need from it, but I can do it. I’m picking my own spots from now on. I don’t have to sit around and take no shit from the Squirrel.”
“Okay,” Frankie said, “that’s what I’m saying. You can take it or you can leave it alone, and that’s fine. I wished I was you. But me, this’s at least ten apiece the guy’s talking about. You don’t want the ten, all right. But I do. And I haven’t got no place else to get it. You have.”
“Not that much,” Russell said. “I’m not gonna get ten out of this. Five, seven’s more like it. No ten. You gimme ten and I’ll be gone so fast it was like I never was here. I know exactly what I’m gonna do, I get that kind of dough. But, I don’t have to get it from what he’s gonna, that he’s got in mind to do. It’s gonna take me a while longer, but I can get it from what I’m doing anyway, and that, that’s on balls, see? Balls. It’s something I think up myself, how I’m gonna do this. So, the guy don’t like me? All right, I still don’t have to kiss his ass, I don’t want to. Fuck him. So it’s up to you and him. It’s up to you guys. You want me, you want me in this, I’ll come in. He’s the guy with the big ideas. Fine. You want to go and get somebody else, also fine. Don’t matter to me.”