“Acid, mescaline, grass,” I advertised sotto voce, though my voice tended to rise a decibel with every item I pronounced. “Nembies, bennies, crystal meth.” I was a walking apothecary.
“You sure this stuff is pure?” my potential customer might ask, inspecting the tab of orange sunshine or windowpane in my sweaty palm.
“Pure as morning dew,” I’d affirm, “if the dew was cut with a little strychnine.” I couldn’t tell a lie. But to reassure them I might pop a tablet into my mouth and chase it with a swig of beer.
Then I would look askance at Lamar, slouched at a table against the wall surveying his domain. He wore tropical suits even in winter and sported a drooping mustache, goatee, and shoulder-length chestnut hair like General Custer. A gentleman alcoholic, he drank whiskey from a silver hip flask, since the bar was only licensed to serve beer. A less scrupulous supervisor than old Avrom, he didn’t seem to mind my unprofessional salesmanship; for all his pretensions he was a lousy businessman himself. He preferred being thought of more as a philanthropist than a merchant, so long as it was understood that I was his creature and the drugs had their source in him. Descended from old money, slaveholders, and cotton barons, Lamar liked to give the impression that his funds were unlimited. Whatever I rendered unto him when I turned out my pockets at the end of an evening, he considered gravy. Still, I made an effort after my fashion. I was grateful to him for the goods I was allowed to sample free of charge, to say nothing of the excuse the job gave me to approach the ladies.
On the night in question I’d already alienated several. When, for instance, a Pre-Raphaelite-looking young woman failed to guess my name (she hadn’t actually tried), I introduced myself as Rumpleforeskin, to which she replied unamused, “Funny man.” I asked another if she would like to swap her honor for some magic beans, and got a similar response. I knew, of course, that my brand of patter (call it a tic) was more apt to offend than intrigue, but if I disqualified myself first, you couldn’t say I’d been outright rejected by the girl of the moment.
I had chased an assortment of pills with a couple of beers and was feeling pretty frisky when I saw her. She was a touch more put-together than the usual run of hippie talent in the bar. Her nose was of the chiseled variety (think Nefertiti), her umber eyes given to a feline narrowing when she spoke. Her hair was that shade of blue-black called “raven” in gothic novels, its texture fine as record vinyl. It was done up in a schoolmarmish twist, unlike the free-flowing tresses of the liberated types that swayed near the jukebox or conspired at the tables. Also, this one — when she’d removed her coat — was wearing a burgundy dress, a slinky vintage number at odds with the prevailing hip-huggers and miniskirts. A tourist, I concluded dismissively. She was engaged in lively conversation with a compact character in a navy blazer and a loosened necktie. He was smooth-shaven, with a shock of strawberry hair that hung like a breaking wave over an earnest eye.
I had hair like a burnt shrub.
“Acid, mescaline, grass,” I interjected.
“No thanks,” the dude replied, scarcely bothering to look in my direction. To his date he continued asserting, “Mayor Loeb will never cave in to their demands.”
“But don’t you think the mediation of the clergy will have an effect?” she wondered, batting her eyes contrarily. “They’ve got a pressure group that includes ministers and priests, even a rabbi—”
“The strike is illegal, Rachel. The city can’t negotiate with the union until the men go back to work.”
“Blue cheer, purple haze …” I persisted, which finally got the guy’s attention.
“Excuse me, we’re having a private conversation here.”
I nodded in sympathy till he turned away, but still couldn’t bring myself to stop eavesdropping on their exchange.
“Who cares if it’s legal, Dennis?” the girl Rachel was saying with some impatience. “I’m talking about fundamental injustice.”
“And I’m talking about strikers in contempt of the Chancery Court. Their union is outside the jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Board—”
“There used to be a slave auction just down the street,” I offered. I had this tidbit on Avrom’s authority and thought it somehow demonstrated evidence of my social conscience.
Dennis turned back to me with a poisonous glare. He was very self-possessed for such a runty guy. “And this is relevant to what?” he asked.
“Also a tree that was used for lynchings.” The tree was my own invention.
Rachel tilted her imperial head inquisitively.
“Exactly what part of ‘fuck off’ don’t you understand?” wondered Dennis.
“Sorry,” I said, but something about the girl (her flaring nostrils? the hand on a slightly canted hip?) kept me glued to the spot.
When I didn’t move, Dennis feigned interest. “Just what kind of a nitwit are you?”
“I’m a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas.”
Dennis sniffed. “Oh, an English major,” was his derisive verdict. He turned away again, satisfied that he’d effectively put me in my place.
Continuing his defense of the municipality, he cited various health hazards that rotting garbage might breed: “Typhoid, cholera …,” counting off diseases on his fingers as Rachel made an effort to listen. But I could tell she was growing annoyed with him. As he persisted in ignoring my presence, I took the occasion to revise his original judgment, aware that I was crossing beyond a point of no return.
“Lapsed,” I said.
He never looked at me, but Rachel did, once again staring quizzically.
“Lapsed English major,” I clarified for her sake. Then I thought I saw the ghost of a smile flit across the girl’s soft-hued face. That was all it took to light a pilot in the hollow of my rib cage. The unembellished barroom held a complementary warmth that made me feel as if its occupants were sheltering from a storm, though there was nothing but an icy drizzle outside. A lemony, fin de siécle-style ambience enfolded the place: I saw absinthe drinkers at the tables, the barmaid a dead ringer for the one in the painting by Manet. The chemicals were being gentle with me tonight.
“Reform takes time,” Dennis was explaining, his tone level and instructive, but his voice broke off abruptly when he noticed that Rachel was no longer listening. He followed her gaze toward the object she seemed to be taking the measure of, that being myself. “And until the strike is resolved,” he said, raising his voice to make sure he was heard, “trash like this”—indicating me with his chin—“will remain uncollected.”
“And rats like you will grow fat from the swill.”
The remark cleared my lips without premeditation, and while it admittedly didn’t make much sense, it nevertheless had the ring of a rapier-like rejoinder in my ear. Not always so fast on my feet, I was pleased with myself. In the event, I didn’t anticipate what came next, which was that Dennis, pint-sized as he was, knocked me down. He dispatched me handily with a one-two punch that consisted of an uppercut to the solar plexus and a roundhouse to the skulclass="underline" I saw asteroids and imagined exes marking the spots that were my eyes, as the floor rose up to smack me as well.