“Okay. Okay. You got the kid. I understand that. Let’s go to a hotel. You want the Beverly Wilshire? I can’t go to the Beverly Hills Hotel. I got a problem there. What about the Four Seasons? You want to fuck in the Four Seasons?”
“You need to get an AIDS test,” she said.
“Why?” Lenny looked amused.
“Because you’re a heroin addict. Because you’ve been in jail,” she began.
“Who told you that?” Lenny sat up.
“You told me,” she said. “Terminal Island. Chino. Folsom? Is it true?”
“Uh-huh,” Lenny said. He lit a cigarette. “Five years in Folsom. Consecutive. Sixty months. I topped out.”
She stared at him. She thought how easy it would be, to reach and take a cigarette. Just one, once.
“Means I finished my whole sentence. No time off for good behavior. Lenny did the whole sixty.” He smiled. “I don’t need an AIDS test.”
“You’re a heroin addict. You shoot cocaine. You’re crazy. Who knows what you do or who you do it with.” She was beginning to be afraid.
“You think I’d give you a disease?” Lenny looked hurt.
Silence. She was looking at Lenny’s legs, how white the exposed skin was. She was thinking that he brought his sick body to her, that he was bloated, enormous with pathology and bad history, with jails and demented resentments.
“Listen. You got nothing to worry about. I don’t need a fucking AIDS test. Listen to me. Are you hearing me? You get that disease, I take care of you. I take you to Bangkok. I keep a place there, on the river. Best smack in the world. Fifty cents. I keep you loaded. You’ll never suffer. You start hurting, I’ll take you out. I’ll kill you myself. With my own hands. I promise,” Lenny said.
Silence. She was thinking that he must be drawn to her vast emptiness, could he sense that she was aching and hot and always listening? There is always a garish carnival across the boulevard. We are born, we eat and sleep, conspire and mourn, a birth, a betrayal, an excursion to the harbor, and it’s done. All of it, done.
“Come here.” Lenny extended his arm. “Come here. You’re like a child. Don’t be afraid. I want to give you something.”
She moved her body closer to his. There are blue enormities, she was thinking, horizons and boulevards. Somewhere, there are blue rocks and they burn.
“Close your eyes,” Lenny said. “Open your mouth.”
She closed her eyes. She opened her mouth. There was something pressing against her lip. Perhaps it was a flower.
“Close your mouth and breathe,” Lenny said.
It was a cigarette. She felt the smoke in her lungs. It had been six months since she smoked. Her hand began to tremble.
“There,” Lenny was saying. “You need to smoke. I can tell. It’s okay. You can’t give up everything at once. Here. Share it. Give me a hit.”
They smoked quietly. They passed the cigarette back and forth. She was thinking that she was like a sacked capital. Nothing worked in her plazas. The palm trees were on fire. The air was smoky and blue. No one seemed to notice.
“Sit on my lap. Come on. Sit down. Closer. On my lap,” Lenny was saying. “Good. Yeah. Good. I’m not going to bite you. I love you. Want to get married? Want to have a baby? Closer. Let me kiss you. You don’t do anything. Let me do it. Now your arms. Yeah. Around my neck. Tighter. Tighter. You worried? You got nothing to worry about. You get sick, I keep you whacked on smack. Then I kill you. So why are you worried? Closer. Yeah. Want to hear about R and R in Bangkok? Want to hear about what you get for a hundred bucks on the river? You’ll like this. Lean right up against me. Yeah. Close your eyes.”
“Look. It’s hot. You want to swim. You like that? Swimming? You know how to swim?” Lenny looked at her. “Yeah? Let’s go. I got a place in Bel Air.”
“You have a place in Bel Air?” she asked. It was after the meeting. It was the week before Christmas. It was early afternoon.
“Guy I used to know. I did a little work for him. I introduced him to his wife. He owes me some money. He gave me the keys.” Lenny reached in his pocket. He was wearing a white-and-yellow warm-up suit. He produced a key ring. It hung in the hot air between them. “It’s got everything there. Food. Booze. Dope. Pool. Tennis court. Computer games. You like that? Pac Man?”
She didn’t say anything. She felt she couldn’t move. She lit a cigarette. She was buying two packages at a time again. She would be buying cartons soon.
“Look. We’ll go for a drive. I’ll tell you some more war stories. Come on. I got a nice car today. I got a brand-new red Ferrari. Want to see it? Just take a look. One look. It’s at the curb. Give me your hand.” Lenny reached out for her hand.
She could remember being a child. It was a child’s game in a child’s afternoon, before time or distance were factors. When you were told you couldn’t move or couldn’t see. And for those moments you are paralyzed or blind. You freeze in place. You don’t move. You feel that you have been there for years. It does not occur to you that you can move. It does not occur to you that you can break the rules. The world is a collection of absolutes and spells. You know words have a power. You are entranced. The world is a soft blue.
“There. See. I’m not crazy. A red Ferrari. A hundred forty grand. Get in. We’ll go around the block. Sit down. Nice interior, huh? Nice stereo. But I got no fucking tapes. Go to the record store with me? You pick out the tapes, okay? Then we’ll go to Bel Air. Swim a little. Watch the sunset. Listen to some music. Want to dance? I love to dance. You can’t get a disease doing that, right?” Lenny was holding the car door open for her.
She sat down. The ground seemed enormous. It seemed to leap up at her face.
“Yeah. I’m a good driver. Lean back. Relax. I used to drive for a living,” Lenny told her.
“What did you drive? A bus?” She smiled.
“A bus? That’s sharp. You’re one of those sharp little Jewish girls from Beverly Hills with a cocaine problem. Yeah. I know what you’re about. All of you. I drove some cars on a few jobs. Couple of jewelry stores, a few banks. Now I fly,” Lenny said.
Lenny turned the car onto Sunset Boulevard. In the gardens of the houses behind the gates, everything was in bloom. Patches of color slid past so fast she thought they might be hallucinations. Azaleas and camellias and hibiscus. The green seemed sullen and half asleep. Or perhaps it was opiated, dazed, exhausted from pleasure.
“You fly?” she repeated.
“Planes. You like planes? I’ll take you up. I got a plane. Company plane,” Lenny told her. “It’s in Arizona.”
“You’re a pilot?” She put out her cigarette and immediately lit another.
“I fly planes for money. Want to fly? I’m going next week. Every second Tuesday. Want to come?” Lenny looked at her.
“Maybe,” she said. They had turned on a street north of Sunset. They were winding up a hill. The street was narrow. The bougainvillea was a kind of net near her face. The air smelled of petals and heat.
“Yeah. You’ll come with me. I’ll show you what I do. I fly over a stretch of desert looks like the moon. There’s a small manufacturing business down there. Camouflaged. You’d never see it. I drop some boxes off. I pick some boxes up. Three hours’ work. Fifteen grand,” Lenny said. “Know what I’m talking about?”
“No.”
“Yeah. You don’t want to know anything about this. Distribution,” Lenny said. “That’s federal.”
“You do that twice a month?” she asked. They were above Sunset Boulevard. The bougainvillea was a magenta web. There were sounds of birds and insects. They were winding through pine trees. “That’s 30,000 dollars a month.”
“That’s nothing. The real money’s the Bogotá run,” Lenny said. “Mountains leap up out of the ground, out of nowhere. The Bogotá run drove me crazy. Took me a month to come down. Then the Colombians got mad. You know what I’m talking about?”