Heroin Chronicles (16 page)

Sidney's dealings were all undercover except for Leslie, the sheboonie up the street who wore curlers, slippers, and a matching bathrobe. Youngsters thought she was an ugly-ass woman until you saw her up close and you realized she was a dude who wanted to be an ugly-ass woman. He would show up at Sidney's door, which Sidney told him not to do—who really wanted a sheboonie coming to the house?—early in the morning to get some stepped-on baggies of powder, because even though I didn't know a thing about heroin, I knew that Sidney would toss in all kinds of shit to stretch it and keep that money flowing. Leslie shared her heroin with Norman Zerka, the dude who was so light-skinned that even with his lame afro, no one was sure if he was black or not. Norman took to living with Leslie because he liked that heroin high and he even left Bernadette, the woman who was supposed to be his wife, cause she couldn't afford to keep him stoned like he wanted to be. I didn't mind Norman cause he was polite, and didn't break my fingers. He always had hot shit to sell, nice bikes he would jack at UCLA from the white boys, but people who knew better wouldn't buy his magic television, like my mother did. “I can't pass up this great deal,” she said, and Norman, polite as always, brought back her change for a ten, and sold her this really new-looking, all-white and shiny, tiny television that my mama placed in the kitchen so we could eat dinner and watch Alfred Hitchcock movies. But Norman wasn't really selling the hot television, he was renting it. Within a week, he sneaked in the house and stole the television back and sold it to somebody else.

Sidney, who had already been the king of the neighborhood, and now seemed to be king of the world, lived exactly like he had lived before, but with more aplomb. One sunny afternoon, he was holding court under the big pine tree. He sat there on the fire hydrant, a six-pack near his feet, with most of the fellas in the neighborhood laughing at his jokes and drinking his Heinekens.

“I don't know about you knuckleheads, but I'm going on vacation.”

“Where to?” Henry-Hank, the neighborhood's handsome idiot asked.

“Amsterdam.”

Everyone nodded as though they knew where and what he was talking about.

“You can smoke weed in coffee houses. Police don't fuck with you and the women are cool and don't mind taking care of you.”

Who could argue with Sidney's success? He had a plan, and the funds to pull it off. I imagined myself kicking it with beautiful blond women; then I shook that nonsense out of my head. That was a mistake; suddenly they noticed me, particularly my brother. Usually, he was too high to care.

“What you doing here! Take your ass home. Hang out with Googie, somebody your own age,” he said.

I shrugged and walked away, making a slow meandering circle and ending up exactly where I had been in the first place. Then, as if by instinct, the fellas uprooted themselves and ended up at my house. As long as my mother was at work, the fellas—an ever-changing number of brothers who would hold sway on the lawn or in the living room, smoking weed and watching sports, or drinking beer on the beautiful Saint Augustine grass that my dad had planted before he and my mother divorced—kicked it at our house. I listened to them argue about the Lakers and the Rams, and I even heard an argument about whether or not H.P. Lovecraft was racist. Then Henry-Hank appeared, agitated as Lassie with an urgent message.

“Sidney is passed out, facedown in the ivy in front of his house.”

Weed and beer might make you mellow, but everybody was now alert and hustling to Sidney's house.

Henry-Hank was right; there was Sidney, facedown in the ivy, looking stylishly dead.

Jude squatted next to him and shook his shoulder.

“He ain't dead, he's passed out.”

Jude and Lil' Dell lifted him up and walked him up the steps and knocked on the door.

Mrs. Green opened the door and for a moment was shocked, but then she looked so angry that it didn't seem she cared that her son was right there, drooling, head lolling about.

“What did you do to my boy? Did y'all get him drunk?”

Jude, never too quick on the uptake, just shook his head. “I didn't get him drunk.”

“Well, he's drunk; he's even pissed on himself.”

“Like I said, we didn't get him drunk.”

She opened the door and Jude and Lil' Dell dragged him to the couch and tossed him on it.

Sidney wasn't much good for anything after that. Every day he was fucked up, passed out on somebody's lawn or porch, or maybe unconscious in the backseat of somebody's car. I got to wondering about heroin then, how somebody as social as Sidney would decide to leave what he was behind, and become something else altogether: a straight dope fiend. He stopped selling weed and red devils and he certainly wasn't going to be selling his stash of heroin; he was running through it like Halloween candy.

Mrs. Green came home from work one day to see all the furniture turned upside down and ripped apart; nothing was stolen as far as she knew other than the cute little television Sidney had picked up for her from Norman Zerka. But Sidney knew what had been stolen—the basis for his economic existence and his happiness—and he was right out on the street looking for it.

Sidney, possessed of super ghetto cool, walked around the neighborhood in such casual good humor that if you didn't know him you'd think he was on top of the world. And despite Sidney having been robbed of his livelihood, his mother kept him in spending money, a whole lot of spending money, because she made serious cash running the Department of Recreation and Parks for the city of Los Angeles. Sidney began buying beer for anyone who wandered onto the corner under the big tree. He let Henry-Hank have a Heineken, even Googie. I could have had one myself, but I didn't like the taste of beer and didn't want to be beholden to Sidney. All the generosity was not how I knew Sidney to be. It didn't take a genius to figure out why; he needed information.

It almost looked normal around the neighborhood with Sidney back on his throne passing the joint around like how it used to be done before the heroin descended upon Second Avenue. He just took it when the running joke got to be asking him if he had any red devils, and he'd just shrug, smile broadly, open his arms, and say, “Wish I did,” or, “Red devils, me?”

A week or so later, Sidney getting ripped off was history, and he was ready to make his move. Googie told me Sidney had showed up at his window, rapping on it just loud enough not to wake his daddy. In a few minutes Googie stumbled outside buckling up his overalls.

“What it be like?” Googie asked, trying to sound hard and hiding how excited he was to have Sidney, even in his fallen state, blessing his house with his presence. Sidney sat on a wooden picnic table, near the patio, smoking a square. He offered Googie one, and Googie wanted it, knowing that he couldn't handle it, even a menthol. He reached for it and Sidney yanked it away and laughed.

“Does your daddy let you smoke now?”

“I don't know. Maybe I should ask your mama,” Googie said, and headed back into the house.

“Hey, Googie, don't go away mad. I got a money-making proposition that I know you're going to like.”

“What's that?”

“I want you to hang out at Leslie's house. She likes to play
Monopoly
and shit. Get into one of them games. Keep your eyes open to where Norman Zerka might have the stash. I'm sure that's the fool who ripped me off.”

Whatever Googie felt before, the giddiness of making money, the pride at having Sidney cajoling him to do a favor—all of that vanished. In its place was a Fatburger, pink at the center with a runny egg on top, queasiness.

“You want me to kick it with a sheboonie?”

Sidney shrugged. “I ain't asking you to be one.”

“If you think they got it, why don't you just strong arm them and get it back?”

Sidney drew on his cigarette. “Norman Zerka, no problem. Leslie might be a sheboonie, but she can straight beat the shit out of you and she's strapped and knows how to shoot. Once, Lil' Dil tried to steal her purse, and she said,
You made me jump out of my femaleness, back into my maleness, and now I'm gonna kick your ass!
And she did, beat his ass south and north. She was a paratrooper when she was living as a man. She went through jump school with Jimi Hendrix.”

“Jimi who?” Googie didn't hear any of that; what he heard was what Sidney wanted him to do. It wasn't something he wanted to do—chance getting beat down by a sheboonie for the world to know.
Fuck that!
“I ain't cool with this. Get somebody else to do it,” Googie said, and turned around again.

“I'll give you forty dollars.”

Googie pivoted like Kareem doing an up-and-under. “Fifty, up front.”

“Aw, I see you learning how to negotiate,” Sidney said, and pulled two twenties and a ten off a roll and flicked them to Googie; floating weirdly, they reached his hand.

“You help me get my shit back and I'll give you twice that much.”

“What? A hundred fifty?”

Sidney squinted. “Don't they teach you anything at school? You knuckleheads can't multiply.”

“Shit, I can multiply. Ask me eight times eight! It's sixty-four! How about six times six? It's thirty-six!”

“What's nine times eight?” Sidney asked.

“Ninety-eight,” Googie responded, with the confidence of a pathologically bad guesser.

Sidney shook his head. “Yep, your ass really knocked that out of the park.”

Googie wanted to say
Fuck you
, but he felt the crisp bills in hand and instead watched Sidney walk away into the darkness of the alley.

“Naw, man, I'm not cool with that,” I said.

“I'll give you five dollars.”

“Your ass just said Sidney gave you fifty. I'm gonna be hanging with you at the sheboonie's house and I'm getting one-tenth of what you got for doing the same thing!”

I sipped my Strawberry Crush shaking my head, waiting for Googie to come back at me. I knew something was up since he'd knocked on my door with a drink and chili Fritos for me. I knew I should have asked why he was bringing me something, cause usually his ass would be trying to bum a quarter off of me. I sat on the porch while he stretched out on the lawn like the fellas did, looking as rakish as a fat boy can look.

“I ain't kicking it with a sheboonie. Nope. I ain't rolling with you so you can find Sidney's lost heroin. I'm going to college. I ain't doing knucklehead shit like that.”

Googie snorted. “Look, if you never do anything, how's that living? You always talking about tomorrow—what if you get hit by a car and die? Then all the shit you could have been doing, you didn't do, and what did that get you? You just missed out.”

“You saying I need to kick it with a sheboonie before I die? That don't make no kind of sense.”

Googie's face trembled and he looked genuinely hurt, like a huge baby about ready to cry. I knew he was going to come back pleading something ridiculous. “Aw … come on … I thought we were ace-boon-coon pardners. We go way back, don't leave me hanging, I wouldn't do that—shit, you remember when I saved your ass at that dance at Forshay?”

He finished but I knew that it wouldn't stop, that he would keep at me until I either slapped him or gave in.

“If we going to go, let's roll. I ain't going over there at night. Don't know what kind of shit goes down over there at night.”

We walked the two blocks in silence. I hung back when he got to the door, hoping that no one would notice me. After he knocked, it seemed like nobody was home, which was cool. Then the door swung open so abruptly that Googie covered his head and ran. There was Leslie in an aquamarine bathrobe with matching curlers and fuzzy slippers, wearing lots of makeup on her strangely girlish face.

“Hey, Leslie.”

“What are you doing here?” she asked in a voice that sounded sort of womanly and sort of mannish, but weirder than usual because she was slurring her words.

“You want to play
Monopoly
? I heard you're good. Me and Garvy like to play.”

It seemed like it took a second for the words to register in Leslie's buzzing brain, but she nodded.

“Yeah, I love me some
Monopoly
, but Norman is always too fucked up for board games,” Leslie said, and waved for Googie to follow. Her robe opened revealing smooth, brown, muscular legs that sent Googie into a panic. He looked about for me but I waved to him from the sidewalk.

“Where's your friend going?”

“I think his mama called him. He's chicken-shit like that,” Googie said, and before I could run he was already on me, and grabbed my arm in a sweaty, iron grip and dragged me through the open door into Leslie's house. We smelled sweet, cloying incense and strange music playing, singing and shit, and trumpets.

“You don't like Billie Holiday?” Leslie asked.

“Who's he?” Googie replied.

“Sit down,” Leslie said, ignoring the question, and handed Googie the game. “Do you want something to drink?”

“You got a joint?” Googie asked.

Leslie laughed. “We do not do drugs in my house.” She laughed again and coughed. “You set up the board and I'll get us something to drink.”

Soon as she left the room, Googie stood. “You set up the game, I'm gonna check shit out.”

Googie casually searched the immaculate house—all the furniture covered in plastic with plastic runners protecting the carpets—as though the heroin would spring up and land in his hand.

“You wasting your time. Let's bail,” I said, but Googie just got on his knees to look under the couch.

Leslie returned with 7UPs on a lacquered tray.

“I hope you boys are good. I hate to waste my time with rookies.”

Googie snorted, “I kick much butt at
Monopoly
.”

They began to play and we both saw just how sprung Leslie was for the game. She rolled dice and skipped her silver dog about the board, laughing too hard, even drooling a little. Googie glanced at me a few times and I shook my head. I had no idea of how this was going to go; how this was going to work out in his favor. All I wanted was to get the fuck out of there, especially after Leslie started getting all flirty and taking turns tickling us. Homechick wasn't going away and all she wanted to do was kick our asses at
Monopoly
, and she was. Well anyway, Googie was up fifty dollars on Sidney and that wasn't bad, but I wasn't up on Sidney, not a dime.