Snapshots of Modern Love (8 page)

Funeral for a Friend

The shuffling of feet and the whispering of condolences fills the rented chapel. Steel and U.A.W. workers and their wives in their Sunday' s best pay their respects to Tony' s parents who stand unconsoled in front of the open casket. Ken stands beside them, thankfully wearing a one hundred dollar suit from Sears, and not some expensive double-breasted number
ala
Dave Letterman. He has the money for it, but not the courage to show it.

Explaining things had been very hard. More than explanations, they had been excuses. More than excuses they had been lies. Plain lies, maybe white lies, but lies, fucking lies.

Big callused hands shake his. "I' m sorry," echo dozen of lips. Ken shakes hands and bows his head at each "sorry."

After the plane stopped, he hurried to the back. Tony lay dead in a pool of black blood. A pungent smell of fluids and shit filled the cabin, and Tony' s open eyes looked into his. He got hit in the gut; the Dade County Coroner found three bullets lodged in his burst intestines.

"What the hell happened?" asked Ortega. Ken sat on the dirt in front of the plane' s door, waiting with puffy eyes and a sickened face.

"Fucking Cubans, they wanted money, and Tony got into a fight with them."

"Bastards. I never trusted them. Fucking bastards," said Ortega. He turned to his men and motioned them to remove the body and unload the coke. "I' m dealing with the Panamanians from now on."

Ortega' s men dumped the body under the tail, complaining about the smell and the mess.

"Mister Ortega," said Ken. "I want to ask you a favor."

Ortega nodded.

"Tony' s parents are Polish, and very Catholic. They will want his body back for a church burial. Can you dump the body where it can be found in good shape?"

"Tony was not too bright, but he had guts," said Ortega. "I will take care of it."

"Thank you, sir."

Ortega did as promised. The cops found Tony next day leaning against a Dumpster like a wino suffering from a hangover. The cops came around asking questions. "This guy Tony, he had a belly full of thirty caliber bullets, East German, you know, AK stuff. How do you suppose he got them?

"I have no idea."

The detective looked into Ken' s eyes," Yeah. No idea."

Ken flew back to Youngstown with the body as luggage in the belly of an airliner, and he brought the cleaned up, ready-for-display body to his parents in a nice coffin, the best one money could buy on a short notice. Ken paid the undertaker to put Tony’ s best suit on him.

Questions with impossible answers had taken Ken' s time since the first moment. Why? Why? Some asked. Many others suspected. But nobody said anything out of respect for the grieving parents. Times get tough and young men get into trouble; that' s the way it was, and is, and will always be. Damned mills closing down and laying off people; they have to make a living somehow, whisper the gruff, tired voices of union men inside the chapel. It was drugs. No, it was stolen cars. No, it was a Mafia thing. It was a hit. The Colombians did it. It was bad luck. Poor Tony.

Ken stands in front of the coffin, and wishes he were somewhere else. The jetties in Ponce Inlet surface in his mind, and Debbie naked under the water, and he feels ashamed of such thoughts.

"I' m sorry," he mutters to himself, and tears slide from under his gold rimmed Ray-Bans.

Debbie Does Dallas, Again

"Dee, I want you to meet a buddy of mine," says John. "We did business together out west."

A twelve string guitar bounces notes between the old Deep Ellum' s warehouse fronts. Some broad on a street stage sings about boy friends. Debbie thinks it is a cool song.

"Dee . . . are you with us?"

Beer and ecstasy give Debbie a hell of a good buzz. Her hips undulate with every chord. Smooth turn to the right, slow twist to the left, knees down a bit; yes, flow with the music.

"Yes honey, I heard you," says Debbie with a frolicsome smile, her eyes hidden behind mirrored sunglasses where a magenta sky shines its dying lights.

John and his buddy look at each other and laugh.

"She is royally fucked up," says John and adds after a pause," this is Erich."

"Nice to meet you, Erich."

"We wanted to talk business with you, but you won' t remember shit by tomorrow," says John.

"Probably no," says Debbie and she burst into a silly, uncontrollable giggle.

Johnny and his buddy leave her alone on the street corner to go their own way. Debbie watches them disappear into the partying crowd wondering who was the guy with John.
Rick?Lorenzo?
She can’ t remember either where she was going before the music had enthralled her to this corner.

A heavy mugginess presses on the crowd and the odor of sweat and fried foods drifts in slow eddies around her. The sun hides behind the downtown buildings, the signal for the winos to come out of the gutters and underpasses to make a living off the ones coming to down town seeking pleasure.

Debbie drifts shrouded in street aromas past biker bars, tattoo parlors, clubs, avant-garde furniture stores and trendy eateries. Debbie floats through the crowd using alcohol, ecstasy and coke asher magic carpet.

Later that night Debbie gets herself a new tattoo. She lies on the reclining chair, almost flat on her back while this Ernie guy,
or was Randy?Whatever
, draws a red rose where her pubic hair met her leg. The prickling pain excites her, that pain concentrated down in her middle, and she so detached from it, like a foreign observer watching her own pain from a far away tower, but feeling the physical strain moving up and down under the skin, and her juice gates open to a flood.

"I think I wet my panties," says Debbie with a giggle.

"Some people get excited," says the Tattoo guy running his index fingers in circles around her belly bottom. "Care for another one?"

Freedom of choice is what it is all about, thinks Debbie as she enters the loudest and raunchiest club with the dumpiest facade she could find open that late at night. The music booms and bodies writhe under dark lights. She carries her new pricking pain as she carries her small purse, right there at her fingertips, but not areal part of her, like something going just for a ride.

The bathroom' s counter is a mess of wet paper and butts but she manages to clean and dry a small section. From her compact devoid of make-up she pours a long line of coke on the counter. With a razor from the compact she aligns the white powder in a narrow ridge. Reflected on the mirror Debbie see faces that ignore her doings, and faces that wish they had what she has.

"Nice line," says a voice from the mirror as Debbie prepares to snort her coke. Debbie smiles and snorts half the line.

"You want some?" offers Debbie.

"Sure."

The face comes over the counter with Debbie' s straw, snorts the rest of the line and licks the counter clean. The pretty face belongs to a red hair of good body and hairy armpits. Debbie finds her armpits intriguing; they are like two more crotches, but real close to her freckled breasts.

She - Debbie couldn' t remember her name - kissed her first, just like that, and she let her do it. They ended up in a stool kissing, touching, caressing. Tongues rolled over damped skin and fingers got wet, and Debbie continued to live life by the drop.

Boat Trip

Youngstown drifted in and out of Ken' s mind like a miasma rising from a sewer. The drab factories, the rusted clunkers on the road half eaten by winter salt, the shuttered stores downtown, and the lines at the Social Security office, what a shit ass place to remember. And the cramped cemetery full of concrete crosses where Tony was laid, what a human dump ground it was. Smokeless stacks reached to the sky like cold fingers poking at the curly clouds' bottoms. Psalms came mixed with the noise of trucks from the nearby highway. Down the hole Tony went in his shiny coffin, probably the most expensive thing he ever owned.

But those things now belonged to a past that Ken had been able to extricate himself from, the hard faces, the questioning faces that expected no answer but somehow understood. Ken sipped his piñ a colada and contemplated the blue and green water surrounding Ortega' s yacht now moving steadily over the waves. Splash, splash, its hull parted the waves, so nice to be away from that shit ass place.
Tony, why in hell didn' t you come up front with me? Dumb ass. No, you had to fight it out like some fucking cowboy, like Rambo. Damned coke bales were like sand bags, stopped every bullet behind me. But there you were, sitting behind thin aluminum, shooting at the Cubans like if you were Mr. T in the A-Team. I pity the fool.

It was all over with. Life continued. Again. Ken slurped his piñ acolada and let the rolling and pitching of the boat cuddle him into a pleasant numbness fueled by alcohol. He heard somebody arguing at the stern in Spanish. He looked down in that direction and saw Ortega giving Sonia hell about something. He had no idea what the fuss was about.

Ortega and Sonia were at each other' s throat, yelling insults – at least they sounded like insults to Ken. Ortega pulled a nickel plated pistol from behind his waist and pointed it at Sonia' s head. An orange flash and a crack made Sonia' s head explode in scarlet. She fell to the deck shaking in jerky contortions while her blood tinged the wooden deck.

Ken dropped his piñ a colada between his feet. Two of Ortega' s men showed up with a short but heavy iron pipe and a rope that they tied to Sonia’ s still kicking legs. They heaved Sonia' s body overboard, still exuberant but now just a heap of fish bait. Ken saw her head go under followed by her hair leaving a bloodied spot soon diluted by the ocean water and the distance.

Ortega' s minions remained silent, neither celebrating Sonia' s fate nor showing any discomfort about it. Ortega said something in Spanish, still angry. He looked up and saw Ken looking at him from the upper rear deck, and he saw Ken' s ashen face. Ken couldn' t hold his stare and turned away.

"Am I next?" Wondered Ken. He figured Ortega had whacked Sonia because she was screwing him. Now was his turn to go for a swim. Ken though of jumping overboard.
And then what? Swim to Miami?

Ken stood with both hands on the handrail, his knees trembling, looking at the waves, wondering what would be better, swim or stay. Ortega came behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. Ken started to turn around, expecting to see the black hole of his pistol' s barrel, right on his face. Instead, he met Ortega' s smiling face standing in front of him.

"No good woman, was getting too friendly with the cops."

Ortega held a glass full of Bourbon, which he offered to Ken," Have a drink. You will get over it, plenty of pussy out there."

Ken drank his bourbon in one gulp, his throat burning in a slide of fire. He watched Ortega' s crew wash Sonia' s blood away by splashing bucketfuls of seawater on the deck. Youngstown with its parade of wrinkled, weathered faces didn' t seem so unsavory now.

The Fucking Trip

Erich breaths in short gasps. In and out. Debbie moans in pain as Erich goes in and out. Another round of forced anal sex, no Vaseline either. Bastard. In and out. Debbie wishes she had diarrhea so she could explode all over the bastard. In and out faster and faster.

Two days with Erich, and she has hated every minute. Erich from Arkansas, an inbred bastard, for sure, thinks Debbie sitting cross legged on the passenger side of Erich' s Seville, miles going by, country music rising from the radio to fill the smoky interior.

"I' m gonna make some good money in this trip," says Erich.

"So happy for you," says Debbie staring straight over the hood. She smokes in long puffs.

"First thing I' m gonna do when I get back West, is get my self two young China whores, you know, real nice and tender like chicken nuggets." He laughs at his own wit.

"I thought that you people would rather fuck your own relatives, like little nieces," says Debbie. "Or you don' t like fighting it out with your brothers?"

Erich pulls his nine-millimeter Glock from under the seat and points it at Debbie' s head. "You' re fucking funny, aren' t you?" He pokes the muzzle at Debbie' s temple, every time saying "Aren' t you?"
Poke
," aren' t you?"
Poke
," aren' t you?"
Poke
.

Debbie remains cool, staring straight. It didn' t matter one way or another. Erich puts the pistol back under the seat, then leans over her side and slaps her face. It burns but Debbie shows neither emotion nor pain. Been there, done that.

"I' m gonna dump your skinny ass once this deal is done. Fuck John and fuck you, you hear me? You' re riding the bus back little miss. I can get my own pussy." He pauses. As he looks away he mutters," If I haven' t killed you by then."

Debbie feigns hearing nothing, but her muscles tense and her already heightened survival instinct kicks into high gear.

"This mother fucker is up to no good," she thinks. John had asked her to accompany Erich in this trip so she could introduce him to his dealers. Erich showed them a briefcase full of money, from "West Coast investors," so the money part didn' t seem like bullshit, but the bastard, ponders Debbie, wasn' t right in the head, like he had watched too much TV or he had been dropped when he was a baby. Maybe it was the way his crooked smile seemed to hang from his face as if ready to spill from one side; and playing around with his gun. He couldn' t get a hard on if he didn' t have that thing pointed at her while she was giving him head.

She would be glad when they reached the end of this trip. Let John' s friends handle the hick bastard, bring him down a couple of notches, the hard way.

Her cigarette grows too short. She sticks the smoldering butt in the ashtray under the dashboard and squashes it by turning it in her fingers like if she were trying to drill a hole through the metal. From her purse she gets her pack and lights another one.

"What a fucking trip," she says aloud, as if speaking to herself. Erich ignores her, too busy picking his nose.

Complicated Matters

As Ken' s pick up crossed the Florida-Georgia line northbound on I-75, a slight relief came over Ken. But he knew the relief would never be complete until he delivered the Adidas bag sitting beside his own bag on the floorboard.

"I need you to do me a favor," Ortega had asked back in Miami.

"Si," said Ken. "What is it?"

"I have a little bag of merchandise that needs to be delivered in Atlanta."

"Have one of your guys do it."

"I need an honest, white face like yours," had said Ortega. "Cops are too suspicious of us, more if we are driving expensive cars, or rental cars."

"Get yourself an old car."

"It' s good money. Easy work."

Ken took the job, but it wasn' t for the money. He had plenty of that. This job gave him the opportunity to pack his things and leave town without suspicion, for good. The good part Ken kept from Ortega as Ken didn' t want to get in an argument with him, like Sonia did.

Ken didn' t want Ortega chasing after him either, so he would do as told, deliver the bag, collect the money and deliver it to Ortega by FedEx, and then disappear for good. No hard feelings.

Ken slowed down as he looked for the right house. The maples aligned on the street made it hard for him to seethe numbers over the porches. A blue house with white trimming,
Must be that one
. He slowed down because a delivery van in front of him had stopped in front of the blue house, blocking the road.

Ken was ready to blow the horn when the van' s side door opened and a S.W.A.T. team rushed out and stormed the house.

"Police! Police!"

The house’ s door went down and cops burst in. It was over in seconds. Ken found himself surrounded by flashing red and blue lights that had poured from every alley and side street. The cop driving the van came out and motioned Ken to go around the parked van. Ken smiled, maneuvered his truck around the van and waved to the cop as he drove away. His hands trembled and his butt hole strained, ready to pop.
Enough of this shit.

"I have a message for Mister Ortega," Ken said from the pay phone. "He needs to call me at this number." Ken gave the pay phone number to the old Cuban guy on the other side of the line, wondering if the old cog understood a word he said. Ken repeated the number in his mauled Spanish. "It' s important,
im-por-tan-te
, O.K?"

After three hours of waiting in his truck parked beside the phone booth, the phone rang. Ken reached across the window and picked the receiver up.

"Hello."

"Ken! So happy to hear from you!" came Ortega' s voice across the hissing line.

"Hey Mister Ortega, that little place of yours ... it' s out of business, you know."

"Yeah, shit happens, you know."

"I got your stuff. What do you want me to do with it?"

"Let me make a couple of calls and I will call you right back, O.K.?"

"I' m at a pay phone, middle of Nigger town."

"Don' t worry. I' ll call you right back." The line went click.

Ortega didn' t own a phone, too risky he said. He used a network of pay phones and friends' phones scattered all over Little Havana. He had an almost psychotic fear of wiretaps, and he relied on his men to deliver his messages around town, or to make calls for him from pay phones. So Ken knew he would be sitting in his truck for hours with a bag full of coke while black faces looked at him with mistrust.

Two hours later the phone rang.

"Hello."

"Ken, I want you to take the stuff to this guy, and get my stuff from him," said Ortega without hissing noises on the back ground this time.

"Ortega, I' m not a muscle man to be delivering this crap and collecting your shit. Jesus, they are going to roll me."

"You' re all I have, so just do it."

"Fuck no! Listen, I' m giving this shit back to you. Better, I' m gonna dump it somewhere and your guys can come and collect it," said Ken without any sense of carefulness left in him. "I' m out of this business! Almost got busted this morning, you know!"

Silence came from the other side of the line. Ken heart was beating to break from his chest. Ortega' s voice came again, smooth and jovial.

"Hey Ken, I think it' s in your best interest to help me out. After all, your dad in Youngstown, and that dog of his, what' s his name? Rufus? Yeah, Rufus, cute little fellow." Ortega let his words sink in. "He needs the money as much as you do, you know, to pay for the new pick up and to finish fixing up that old house in Maple Street."

Ken stopped breathing and his face turned white.
Fucking bastard.
"Let my dad out of this," said Ken in a whisper.

"Hey, we are all family, and I don' t want to see anything bad happening to the old man."

"Fine, what the hell do you want me to do with this crap?"Ken’ s heart ran near red line.

Ken jotted Ortega' s instructions down and hung the phone with a loud bang.
Fucking bastard.
Ken called his dad and go this answering machine.
Shit
. "Listen dad, very carefully . . ." and Ken had to explain in short minutes what he thought he would never be able to explain in a lifetime.

The Atlanta map showed the way to Tech wood, by North Avenue. Ken drove up there and didn' t like it.
Damn Federal housing project; fucking place looks like Beirut.
He parked his truck in front of a building whose first floor looked like it had been fired bombed. Trash drifted in the wind and new black faces followed him and the bag into the building. A white face also watched him, keenly, from inside the building.

Ken had it figured out. Drop the stuff, pick the cash, get his cut, and drop the rest in a rental box at Harts field, then mail the key to Ortega with a nice fuck you note. Fe Dex would be too easy, let the bastard sweat it out for a few days. End of the story.

Ken knocked on the door, his knuckles white with apprehension. Soon it would be over.

"Come on in," a white voice with a twang answered from inside. Ken opened the door and saw a white guy and a white girl standing behind a table with a briefcase on it. He stepped inside and checked around with a nervous gaze, trying very hard to look cool, but not doing a very good job of it.

"Howdy," said the white guy.

"Hi," said Ken. He looked at the girl, and his jaw dropped. Debbie winked an eye and said," Hi stranger."

"You got . . . got . . . the money?" Ken asked with a nervous voice. For once in his life he wished Ortega' s men were at his back, or Tony with that square looking gun. But here he was, practically naked in front of this guy with the crooked smile, and Debbie. Ken couldn' t make any sense of what was happening. He placed the bag on the table and looked at Erich who kept on smiling.

Erich pushed the brief case to Ken; Ken reciprocated by pushing the bag to him. While Erich inspected the merchandise Ken opened the briefcase. He saw a bunch of money, but he had no intentions of counting it. He wanted out of there, soon. Debbie and he changed stares across the table, and Ken replicated Debbie' s aloofness.

"This is good shit," said Erich.

"It sure is," said Ken, closing the briefcase.

"But I will keep the money anyway."

Erich pulled his gun from behind his waist and pointed it to Ken, and laughed. "Good bye, sucker." Erich had observed that Ken had no back up and no gun.

Ken put the briefcase in front of him as Erich fired the first shot. The shock sent Ken backwards onto the floor, the bullet lodged into the money. Debbie jumped over Erich' s arm holding the gun and bit him on the hand as hard as she could.

"You bitch!" Erich screamed in pain and punched Debbie in the face with his free hand, over and over, but Debbie wouldn' t let go. Erich looked up just in time to see Ken coming over the table ready to swing the briefcase in his face. He tried to shoot again, but his shots went into the table instead. The briefcase landed on his face with a numb thud and split open.

Money and screams floated in the room. Erich was on the ground struggling with Ken. Debbie bit Erich' s finger with such viciousness that Erich opened his hand, the gun falling to the floor. At that moment Erich kicked Ken in the groin and sent him on his back. Before Erich could get up, Debbie was on top of him.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Good Lord, how many bullets does that gun carry? wondered Ken still grabbing his nuts. Debbie fired until the gun ran empty, then she proceeded to kick the bloody mass.

"Fucking inbred bastard!"

Ken stood and looked at her bloodied face in amazement. She finally looked at him and stopped kicking and cussing the corpse.

"Are you O.K?" asked Ken. The bruises in Debbie’ s face had started to swell.

"I' m fucking fine. What the hell are you doing here?"

"Same thing you' re doing, I suppose."

Both stood panting, the corpse still seeping blood between them. Seconds went by before anybody could say anything. Ken expected to hear sirens, and cops coming through the door yelling "Freeze!"But nothing happened. His ears continued to ring and a slight breeze fingered the curtains beside the open window where the top of the Coca-Cola building stood against an azure sky.