Gypsy Blood (11 page)

Carnival knew better then to argue. They walked across the street and down two others until they came to Jimmy Joe’s Tavern and Grill. At least they had eggs.

They walked in, blinking from the abrupt transition from daylight into tavern darkness.

“Let’s get a booth,” Carnival suggested.

“You romantic devil.”

They sat down. The waitress brought Carnival coffee without asking. Strong and black, the way he liked it. He gave her his best grin as a reward. She didn’t seem all that impressed.

There seems to be a lot of that going around these days.

Carnival thought about Maya, as he drank his coffee. He drank it every morning as part of a good breakfast. Consistency was as important as balance.

“Take your order?” The waitress asked, speaking in a short clipped fashion, like she’d practiced her enunciation off of old Dragnet episodes.

“Take the coffee back,” Chollo ordered. “Bring me a water glass of rye. Canadian Club, if you’ve got it.”

The waitress didn’t blink. There were a couple of early morning drinkers in here already. Some of them looked like they’d spent the night.

“I’ll have the breakfast special,” Carnival said, grabbing Chollo’s coffee before she took it away. “And keep the coffee coming.”

“So what you been up to?” Chollo asked.

Carnival debated about mentioning Maya and decided against it. Chollo didn’t readily mix with that part of Carnival’s life.

“Keeping busy.”

Ha. Holding hands for money and playing cards. That’s some kind of busy.

Carnival ignored Poppa’s joke. He’d heard too many fortune telling jokes. He’d never understood the attraction. He didn’t stand in banks, making currency puns to the tellers. Why do people feel the need to laugh at what scares them?

Chollo wasn’t stupid. He picked up on Carnival’s repressed aggravation.

“Sorry,” Carnival apologized. “I haven’t been myself these days.”

“So you said.” The waitress plunked a water glass full of rye on the table in front of Chollo.

“Thanks,” Chollo said, popping his left eye out of his socket and dropping the glass eyeball into the glass. Carnival had seen him use that stunt a thousand times. The hell of it was that sometimes he swore it was Chollo’s left eye, and sometimes the right. He was waiting for the moment Chollo would drop both eyeballs into a glass.

It’s magic, boy. You should try it sometime. Better than flipping cards and lying over palms.

“Now bring me a dirtier glass and the bottle while you’re at it,” Chollo commanded.

The waitress gave Chollo a dead man’s hard cold stare. Chollo raised her with a long and hard one eyed glower. She folded. A half minute later she was back with the rye and a second tall empty water glass. Chollo filled the glass with the smooth ease of a practicing alcoholic. This was strange behavior even for Chollo. He could drink more than any man Carnival had ever met but never this early in the day.

It’s love, I bet. The short hairy thug has a bad love story to tell. Ask him.

Carnival tried to ignore his Poppa. Chollo drained the one glass, and refilled. The bartender watched from behind the bar, expecting trouble. Carnival didn’t know if he was Jimmy or Joe. He wasn’t even sure he was a bartender. He wasn’t polishing the glasses. Weren’t bartenders supposed to stand behind the bar and polish glasses?

“Hey, isn’t he supposed to be polishing glasses?” he asked Chollo. “Where’s his rag? All bartenders are supposed to carry rags.”

Chollo snorted a blast of rye fumes in Carnival’s direction.

“And all gypsies play the violin,” Chollo noted. “Trouble with you is you watch too much television.”

Blasphemy! You can never watch too much television.

“I’ve been hearing that a lot lately. Maybe I need to get out in the sun a little more often.”

“You do look a little pale. You need a little more of this.”

Chollo took a big noisy swig, swallowing it like he was drowning.

“You got a problem?” Carnival asked.

“No problem,” Chollo said, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. “Just thirsty.”

For a moment Carnival saw Maya, gulping at Olaf’s throat. He looked away, hoping Chollo didn’t take his revulsion the wrong way. Chollo was a drunk but a friend, so Carnival did his best to keep his opinions on Chollo’s blind side.

The best diplomats learn to lie like guilty women.

Breakfast came quickly. It didn’t look too bad for tavern cooking. Scrambled eggs, Canadian bacon, hash browns and three slices of heavily buttered whole wheat toast. Only the eggs were scrambled dry, the hash browns looked like they’d been deep fried in
Morocco
and shipped over in a rusty oil tanker and the toast had speckles in it that Carnival prayed were raisins.

You are what you eat boy, and what you drink.

Carnival ignored Poppa’s comment. He ketchuped the eggs and salted the hash browns. Vinegar would’ve been nice, but the waitress seemed too busy to bother.

“It balances nicely on all sides of the plate,” Chollo noted.

Carnival pointed at the bottle. Chollo scowled.

“Eat your eggs before they hatch,” he said.

Carnival forked his breakfast in.

“I ought to eat healthier, but I can’t see why. I like this kind of breakfast.”

“Who wants to live forever?”

“Not me,” Carnival assured. “It’s my plan to slide into my grave with a beer in one hand, a steak in the other and a mouthful of greasy home fries, with a sign around my neck that says – What a ride!”

Do you think that death changes thing, boy? It’s just another kind of running away. No matter where you go, there you are.

Carnival knew that Poppa was right. Nothing ever left you alone for long. He raised his coffee cup.

“It’s funny how the things we love can be so damn bad for us.

“To cholesterol and cirrhosis,” Chollo observed, tipping back his glassful of rye for another shot at drowning.

“Come up for air every minute or so, okay? What gives, anyway? I’ve never seen you drink like this so early before.”

“I’ve got a friend in jail.”

“So what? Half of your friends are ex-cons the other half are doing time. I’m not being rude. Your home team’s got a blue light timeshare going on in solitary.”

“Har har,” Chollo said. “It isn’t that. It’s the way he’s doing time. He’s a little guy, name of Enrico. The word I hear he’s bunking with somebody who ain’t so little.”

Carnival shook his head, trying to look concerned. He wasn’t being judgmental. Maybe he didn’t run with that sort of crowd, but he wasn’t that far behind them either.

“He getting beat on a lot?” Carnival asked.

“Beat on and hit on,” Chollo explained. “Let’s just say there’s a lot of bars of soap being dropped in that jail cell.”

You see! I told you it would be a tale of bad love.

“Damn,” Carnival commiserated. “That’s hard.”

“That’s why they call it hard time, hombre.”

“Nothing you can do about it?”

“I tried reaching out, but the guy’s too well protected. You know Fat Arnie?”

“Some big shot?”

“The biggest. The guy with the hard on is Arnie’s nephew. I couldn’t touch him with a nuclear bomb.”

“Let me see what I can do,” Carnival said.

“A favor?”

“Barter. I think I’m going to need some help on something I’m working at.”

“You got my number.”

Chollo eyed Carnival warily.

“You’re getting set to work some of that hoodoo, aren’t you?”

Chollo didn’t like Carnival’s magic. He’d seen a few of the things Carnival had messed with in the past but Carnival wouldn’t lie to him. You don’t get too far in life, lying to your friends.

“Yes,” Carnival said. “It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

“You got my number,” Chollo repeated.

He finished his glass, retrieved his eye and got up and left, just that quickly.

Carnival finished his breakfast. Momma taught him to always empty his plate.

Finish what you start, every time.

The waitress was conscientious enough about delivering the bill.

Carnival looked at her, nearly square in the eyes, catching her glance like a deer in a pickup truck’s headlights. He took a deep breath. In and out.

“The bill’s been paid,” He said.

“Huh?”

He tried again, thinking Jedi thoughts.

“The bill’s been paid.”

“Jimmy Joe? We got a welcher, here.”

Ha. My son, Obi Wan Can-owe-me.

Jimmy Joe came over, standing as patiently as Everest.

“Shouldn’t you be polishing a glass?” Carnival asked.

He just stood there and stared until Carnival opened his wallet and handed the big man one of Olaf’s twenties. Jimmy Joe smiled, looking like a happy Lurch Adams.

“Repeat after me,” Jimmy Joe said. “You can keep the change.”

“Huh?”

“You can keep the change,” Jimmy Joe coaxed.

He loomed a little closer. He was really good at looming.

“You can keep the change,” Carnival recited.

The force is strong in this one.

Carnival patted his wallet and shook his head.

As usual, Poppa was right.

Hard Time

G
uys like Warren Bassie were the reason the government called their jails a penal system.
Warren
was fuck happy. He’d stick his meat into anything that wouldn’t move too fast, kick too hard, or grow teeth. It had been his penis that had got him in here in the first place. He’d stopped to rape a forty eight year old teller, while in the midst of robbing a Savings and Loan.

He hadn’t been able to help himself. She fell on the ground when he pushed her and then her dress had slid up nearly past her knees and what was a man supposed to do? He’d been practical and hadn’t taken the foolish risk of removing his trousers. He’d just unzipped and put it into her. He thought she’d liked it. She certainly screamed loud enough. So loudly that he hadn’t heard the alarm going off.

When the ESU arrived in their truck, they’d found him just standing up, his pistol in his pocket, and his gun hanging out in midair. He’d always liked to air dry afterwards. So they’d thrown him into the penal system, and
Warren
and his penis had felt right at home.

Right now he was feeling at home with the new piece of meat the nice men in the blue shirts had delivered. A cute little Puerto Rican named Enrico. When
Warren
looked at Enrico’s cute puffed out lips, he just wanted to jam something in between them.

Of course he wasn’t so foolish. That was a good way to find yourself with your lower bloodpipe chewed off. No sir, Warren was practical when it came to matters such as this. He’d use the back door and try and not make too much noise or too much mess.

He was just finished banging the shit out of the little P.R., wiping himself clean on the man’s pant leg and sitting back in his bunk to air dry.

He didn’t feel guilty. Not one little bit. It was just survival, was all. He was bigger than Enrico so he took whatever he wanted. Survival, you know. Like evolution. You got a hunger, you feed it.
Warren
fed at night, when the guards didn’t look all that closely. Which was good because
Warren
didn’t need any trouble with the guards. Their night sticks made them bigger than he was.

Just barely.

Warren
looked down at Enrico lying there with his butt still up in the air. The fetal position. Ha. It looked more like fecal to
Warren
.

“How’d you like a little more, Rico? How’d you like one more fuck?”

Enrico just curled up a little tighter, trying to hide himself within himself like he was some kind of giant hedgehog.

Buying Pot from the Borsch King

T
hree blocks north of Desmond and Elliot was a small flower cart. Carnival sometimes bought cheap mixed bouquets if he expected a steady client to drop by. It was always a nice touch, he thought. Truth in beauty.

“Hey Mario.”

Mario turned and looked. He was a stocky little fellow with arms like corded rope from twenty years of hauling fresh slaughtered beef.

I don’t like this place. All the souls of those long dead cattle. I see them, all around the flower cart.

Mario had hoisted one too many sides of beef and ruined his back and retired to the flower business. It smelled prettier than meat, he always said.