I slapped hands with him and got in the cab.
The cab smelled like piss and old rain.
Speedy mumbled about money, trying to put his hands in his pants pockets.
Something about 900 dollars on him.
Something about paying for my way back.
Something something.
Bussy.
Speedy gave the cabby an address and we drove toward it.
The cabby started to apologize.
Said he didn’t know.
Said he didn’t want to have to carry him, couldn’t carry him.
“Can’t do this, my man, you know?” he said, making eye contact with me in the rearview mirror at a stoplight.
“Yeah, no problem,” I said.
Speedy tapped my arm and loudly whispered, “Heece a bussy”—then hiccupped.
I laughed.
The cabby laughed making eye contact again in the rearview mirror.
He turned up the contemporary dance music on the radio and raised his eyebrows to me in the rearview mirror. “I make it louder?”
“Hell yeah,” I said, looking out the window.
And we drove.
Speedy tapped my arm with his hand.
He nodded toward the cabby and said, “S’a bussy”—then fell sideways a little.
I caught him and straightened him as the contemporary dance music played.
Cabby said, “I turn here? Here good?”
Speedy said, “No, kip goin. Go a my house, marfucker. I get paid, I have a lot of money. I make more’n you.”
Cabby turned down the music. “Yes ok, that’s good my friend. Ok.”
Speedy took out a handful of crumpled money and showed me.
I opened my eyes real big. “Whoa, nice.”
Speedy laughed, resting against the door and holding the money out.
I laughed.
That made Speedy laugh more.
The cabby was making eye contact with me in the rearview mirror.
He started laughing too.
It was chaos.
When we got to Speedy’s place there was no wife or son out front!
Just a small house with a gate and staircase and some signs about not having a dog on the premises.
“Pull up here, pull up here,” Speedy said, pointing to a utility van out front his house. “Don’t hit my van, it has a security system, ya fung bussy.”
I laughed.
Every time I laughed, Speedy’d laugh and look at me.
Felt like we were both 8 years old, at a sleepover.
Speedy told the cabby to back into the alley a little to line up his door with the sidewalk. “Pull up, pull up,” he kept saying.
Cabby kept saying, “Yes yes, pay here, pay here.”
Speedy handed the cabby a handful of bills.
He offered to pay for my ride back but I said I’d walk, lying about how I knew some people who lived nearby — the old “I know people” routine.
Oh brother!!!
The cabby got out and opened the door for us then stood back while I got Speedy out myself.
I almost dropped him at first because my arms weren’t securely around him, all the weight on my fingers and wrists.
But then I adjusted.
“Put me onna steps,” he said, looking over my shoulder at his house.
I carried him down the cab’s ramp and onto the sidewalk.
Looking at the cabby over my shoulder, he said, “Heece a bussy anway.”
I laughed.
The cabby laughed. “Is ok?”
I said yeah.
He got in his cab and drove away.
I carried Speedy up the front steps, set him down so he had space to lean back.
“Anks,” he said. “I’n sit here and smoke a square. Shh, I mean a joint, nehe.”
I laughed and nodded, said goodbye.
He said, “Ok, I see you Friday,” and fell asleep on the stairs.
It was a really long walk back.
There was already a blister covering my entire left heel, from not wearing socks with my boots.
The blister came off the heel immediately, squishing with each step.
The fucking squishes.
Lord Almighty, the fucking squishes.
Up above, the moonlit clouds looked rippled, like the ribcage of some giant thing digesting me.
And I wondered if the direction I was going went down into the digestive system or up out of it.
Wondered what difference it made.
There was a bug hovering over a small pool of ice cream on the sidewalk.
Like a firefly, but it wasn’t a firefly.
And I could’ve stepped on it and killed it.
But I didn’t.
Be thankful, little bug.
For in my world, you are just a little bug.
IN MY CASTLE/ FUCK THE WORLD
I passed by Spider-Man’s alley this afternoon and saw Face pissing on a dumpster.
“Whattup cous?” he said, zipping up.
He started walking down the alley and motioned for me to follow.
Spider-Man and Janet still weren’t there, but there were two other guys — Larry and Craig — sharing a 40.
Larry was sitting on an overturned bucket.
I shook hands with him and sat on a parking block.
He smiled, clasping his hands between his knees.
He was overweight, wearing this big stretched-out T-shirt.
“Hoowee, namn,” he said.
Craig sat on the ground with his back against a column of the train tracks, holding a crackpipe and a lighter.
He had no shirt on, baggy jeans tied off with a belt, and unlaced peanut-butter-colored work boots — eyes hyped and yellow.
He said, “Hey, we uh, doing some choice activities here.”
Face said, “Don’t worry. This cat coo as shit.”
I said hi.
Craig looked at me for a second.
Then he smiled, holding out his hand.
“Craig Williams,” he said.
I thought it’d be funny to kiss his hand and say, “Nice to meet you.”
But instead we shook hands and locked thumbs.
“Craig Williams,” he said again. “Thass British, but I’m talkin bout I’m become Chinese to my kids if I stay out here too long. Talkin bout ‘One Gone Too Long.’”
He took a huge hit off the crackpipe, turning it slow and watching with his eyes crossed.
He exhaled.
“Yizzir,” Face said, then cleared his throat.
“Hoowee, namn,” Larry said, his hands still clasped between his knees.
Another guy came walking down the alley.
Troy.
I’d seen him around but never really talked to him because he was always too drunk to remember me.
He came up and said, “Ey, hassa goin erybody?”
Skinny, sunburned, and bald.
He wore an oversized white tanktop and long wide-legged shorts with the brand name ‘spraypainted’ on one of the legs.
There was a foam flower behind his ear.
Face said, “Nice petunia, Petunia.”
Troy said, “Anks”—poking through a handful of cigarette butts he’d collected.
His hands were gray and dry like elephant skin, bleeding through cracks.
“Troy, fuck you been?” Craig said, holding up his hands. “You get that ice?”
“Huh?” Troy said. “I’s?”
“Yeah, you suppose’a get ice. I gave you that dollar before. We tryna ice this beer, man.”
Troy barked through some mucus. “Nah man, I never got any dollar.”
Craig laughed. “What? Man, bullshit you didn’t.”
He started to stand up.
Troy just shook his head and said, “Hol on, be right back”—holding the petunia in place with one hand, cigarette butts with the other as he walked away.
There was a strip of hair along his neck where he’d missed shaving.
Troy.
“Man, fuck that motherfucker,” Craig said, resting back against the brick wall behind him, looking at the crackpipe.
He touched an area on his ribs, lightly scratching.
He lifted his arm and pinched the area a little, showed me some scarring on his ribcage.