Stabs at Happiness (13 page)

Three years later, at seventeen, I was having dinner with my father out in deep Southeast Portland, at a restaurant he favored named Jimmy's Hut. The waitresses liked him here too, and for a while now they would let me accompany him into the back, into the bar. We would eat in there. I was not invited to drink, and I didn't care. I never thought of it.

My father might order anything on the menu, from pork chops with applesauce to chicken-fried steak, but all I ever wanted was a hamburger and french fries, with a Coke. I loved the hamburgers there, at Jimmy's Hut.

On this particular night, some kind of weird negotiation was going on. My father had gotten me to admit to him that I was a virgin, and I wasn't even embarrassed – he made me feel okay about it, man-to-man. One of the waitresses or barmaids, here in the dimly-lit Elbow Room—my father knew that I liked her, she was younger than the others, and she seemed to like me too. Patti wasn't working tonight, but as I was coming to understand it she lived in the motel across the street. She could look out of her window and see the images on the screen of the Division Street Drive-In, every night. That sounded great to me.

I was keeping my mouth shut, but I thought I knew what was going on. I didn't dare imagine it might be true, I didn't want to get too excited. This other barmaid, Claire, had called up Patti, then came back to the table and said, “Why don't you talk to her?” So my father went to the phone. Then he came by and said he was going to go see her, he'd be right back, and the way he smiled I figured it was going to come off, she wouldn't be able to resist his charm. And I knew that, although he liked to dicker, money was not a problem here. So it was just a matter of them agreeing on a price, and then I'd go over to Patti's room. I was in love with her then, a true swoon of romantic love, remembering what she looked like, her dark eye-brows and blond hair. She would have dark pubic hair, I supposed, and I was nearly beside myself with wanton visions of her smiling at me, that smile. I was in love.

But with this love came anxiety, and as time began to pass, I began to wonder what was taking so long. Maybe she was telling him no, not under any circumstance, I was just too ugly, too repulsive to her. I found this hard to believe. I wasn't so bad.

Then, with the notion that maybe she had some sort of idiosyncratic, perverse reaction to me … something unreasonable, that wasn't my fault – I began to dislike her. She was, after all, a failure in life, a whore. Fat men, ugly men—she'd do anyone, for money. These men would regard her with contempt.

You must understand, I was willing to forget all this in an instant, willing to utterly fall into selfless love in which state I would do anything for her, I would be devoted, I would save her—I went back and forth, waiting there in the Elbow Room booth.

I had been vaguely aware, as some other customers had come in, that the bartender didn't like me being in there by myself. I could tell just from the attitude of his body, I didn't even have to look over there or really meet his gaze. It was against the law, after all. So I wasn't really taken totally by surprise when Claire came and asked me to wait out front. The real surprise was in how she looked at me as she said this. I interpreted it to mean not only that she didn't much like me, but also that I was in a humiliating position, the wait had gone on so long I was an embarrassment to everyone concerned.

I walked out into the light of the main part of Jimmy's Hut, considered sitting on one of the stools at the counter and ordering a slice of coconut cream pie, a cup of coffee; in truth I would have been glad to have just rewound the last hour or so as if none of this other stuff had ever been contemplated, I could just wait for my dad like a kid and sooner or later he would return.

I couldn't do it. I went outside, and it was raining, dark in the gravel parking lot. My father's midnight blue Chrysler New Yorker was still parked there, so he had to be across the street. If I had been, underneath everything, rather frightened by the prospect of being left alone with Patti, it was exciting but also very scary – now, in this unfamiliar territory, heading across the busy street, I was much more scared, and sick. I didn't want to know the precise definition of my wound, of how my manhood had been injured. I had no real curiosity. The only thing that made me cross the street was the idea of my father watching me, of him thinking I would be afraid to face up to it. I couldn't win, whatever I did I was lost, I would lose, but I had to go through the motions, I had to make it worse, the worse it was the more I had to make sure.

I didn't know what room Patti was in, though it had to be one of these in front, so she could see the screen. Back across Division, down past Jimmy's Hut, I saw some kind of action, huge figures moving, in color, shadows and colored lights in silvery rain. I looked at the big drive-in sign. I looked at the sign with the name of the motel. The “No” turned off, next to the neon orangey red Vacancy.

I heard my father's voice. I knocked right on the door, the wet blue door. I heard another voice, Patti's I guess, and then my father opened up. He looked surprised to see me, there in his undershirt, his hair sort of mussed up.

“What're you doing here?” he said, and I just shook my head. I wanted to hit him, he must have felt it, I wanted to kill him but I could not. Behind him, in the bed, Patti had the covers pulled up to hide her nakedness from me. I didn't like the way she looked, but it didn't matter. It struck me how much taller I was than him, though that meant nothing. I was still raw, I didn't know how the world really worked.

“Why don't you come in out of the rain, you big lug?” he said now, changing on me. “I was just coming over to get you. Patti, uh, has been wondering when I'd get off my ass and bring you back.”

“I'm taking off,” I said, and I walked off into the rain. I walked all the way home. Two hours, soaked to the skin.

When I was twenty-two, I had quit school and been fired from a couple of jobs, then I quit one down at Davis Welding after three days. I was living in a shitty apartment, and when my car broke down my mom called my father and got him to lend me his Chrysler New Yorker so I could use it to look for work. Actually, I was content being on unemployment for a while, but I liked driving the Chrysler, even though it was way too big and used a lot of gas. It felt good to drive it, especially at night. Even though it was a big car, it cornered well, it was surprisingly easy to parallel park. It was sort of like one of those fat men you see sometimes who are agile and light on their feet. My father had another car, a new mulberry or dark-red Buick. He was married again, his fourth wife. Another barmaid.

I was driving down on Williams Avenue one day, on the way to visit my sister, when I saw this girl—she had to be a prostitute—who really stopped me dead. I was a little wary, as this is the black part of town and I didn't know it very well, I didn't really know where I was, but I drove back around and came by to see her again. She was a white girl, standing on the corner of Monroe. There were other, more obvious whores, in short skirts and such, at other corners along the one-way street. The whole scene was perversely exciting to me. This girl looked like a sad madonna in some painting from the Renaissance. She wasn't dressed up, just wearing jeans.

I came back at night, and didn't see her, and then about a week later drove by special and felt really exhilarated when I saw her again. I drove by several times. It was a weekday, about 4:30 p.m. She looked unhappy, and still wasn't dressed anything like a prostitute. She wore blue jeans and a brown jacket, and her dark brown hair was up under a watchcap. She could have been a poor girl waiting for a bus, except for the fact that she was standing at Williams and Monroe.

I drove around the block up ahead, by a closed-down ribs place, and some black guys in a white Lincoln Continental pulled up by me, and the driver said, “Y'all see somethin' you like?”

I went away. The Chrysler was conspicuous. How many times had I come around? I didn't have any money. Besides, that wasn't what I wanted, to be a trick.

I told myself I was just curious, I wanted to talk to her, she looked too intelligent to be living this degraded type of life. I thought about her all the time. I wanted to save her, at the same time I must admit I was excited by the idea of her with her tricks.

I tried to imagine her daily life. She would live in a house with other young whores, eat fried chicken and potato salad and cornbread, soul food, and have a black pimp who fucked her, enslaved her and beat her up. Was she a heroin addict? Yes, probably. I wasn't sure. It seemed likely though. To numb herself out while giving blowjobs and being fucked in the ass.

One night I drove down there, and parked a few blocks away, near Emanuel Hospital. I sat down and watched, from an over-grown vacant lot, while she leaned over, talked into the window, and then got in someone's car and they drove away. A black girl in a white fur jacket and blond wig was left there. In a half hour or so my prostitute had returned. She was eating a candy bar. The white Lincoln Continental came by.

I left. I was obsessed, and while I was ashamed of what I was doing, I was not ashamed enough to stay away for more than a few days. Then I would just want one look at her face. I would be going someplace else, and I would give myself the excuse to drive by once only, to see if she was there. Often she was not. But then, when I saw her again, after thinking she was gone, that she'd been murdered or O.D.'d or gotten out of the life … when I saw her again, I was elated, and I knew she was aware of the car. I was embarrassed, imagining what she must think of me. All I could think of was to sometime pick her up, like a trick, give her all the money I possessed – much more than she would expect—and then I would ask for nothing, I would just give her the money and depart.

I had no girlfriend at this time, though I did have some friends I saw socially, we drank and did cocaine, smoked pot, but I was so poor I was ambitionless. I told no one about the prostitute.

Finally, one night I drove by, I hadn't been around in a week or so—this time, she ran out into the street, yelled something at me, “Hey,” anyway I was shocked, but since she had called to me I slowed down, it took me nearly a block to pull over. I sat there mournfully, waiting for her to curse me and tell me I was a creep. The passenger door was unlocked.

She got in. Immediately, I smelled her perfume, and some other smell, like a melted candy bar on an ancient telephone pole, candy wrapper a hundred years old. She had black nail polish wearing off, charcoal all around her eyes.

“Why don't you ever stop?” she asked, a bit breathlessly. Her voice was higher and more immature than I had imagined, but I had expected my imaginings to be all wrong.

“I never have any money,” I answered.

“Drive us somewhere, okay? Out of the neighborhood.” She lit a cigarette, and then shrewdly said, in a few moments, “I figure either you're insane, and you're gonna kill me, or else you're really stuck on me, right?”

I nodded. She knew what I meant. She asked me my name. Joe. Hers was Crystal. She had a joint in her purse, and she lit it with the Chrysler's cigarette-lighter, that glowing circle of hot orange. We smoked the joint, driving around, and then went to my messy apartment.

She wanted me to do something for her. I said sure. She needed enough money to go back to San Antonio, she said. Saturday night, she said, naked, lying on top of me, there was this guy who would have all this money delivered to him, as part of a dope deal. She wanted me to take him off.

“You're big and strong,” she said, touching me once more. I could sense some nervousness, though not there in her hand. There was nothing unbelievable or especially depraved about the sex. But there was a palace way up there in her vagina. I wanted to cry, I wanted to just sob, but that was not something I did.

I kissed her with my dirty mouth, and Crystal let me. She had a serpent's burning tongue. I wanted to let my love come out, even if it was tainted, impure. It was a creature you couldn't look at in the light.

She was using me, and I consented, I deserved to be all used up. I wasn't doing anything better with myself.

“Are you smart?” Crystal asked, looking deep into my eyes. I didn't know if, in her terms, I was, or could be, and I didn't reply. “You might be,” she said, and pressed herself against me. There were miscellaneous bruises here and there on her body, scratches, signs of wear, a bandaid on her vulnerable bare foot.

It was a reckless plan.

There is this motel up a few blocks from Williams, on San Rafael, way before you reach Monroe. It looked at that time sort of dilapidated-modern, and built as it was some distance away from any busy street, you wondered what they could ever have had in mind. It was turquoise, mostly, and salmon-pink. A red Coke machine down below, next to the office. Inside the office, the flickering bluish light of a TV. We snuck past this, and went upstairs.

Crystal had on jeans, a faded print blouse, and a letterman's jacket, cream body and wine-red sleeves, too big for her, from Jesuit High. Her hair was down, dark brown, and she didn't have much makeup on. She didn't look too wholesome though. It was in her eyes, or just the look on her face. No, it was there in her eyes.

“Earl,” she said, knocking on the door.

“Yeah?”

“Walker sent me. I brought you some food. Barbecue. Let me in.”

“I'm busy, man. Gina's here.”

“Well, Walker sent me by.” Crystal hesitated, looked over at me. “If you want to, man, maybe we could do something… like maybe, you know, a two-on-one.

Inside, Earl laughed. Every second we waited, wondering whether or not he'd open the door, stretched out and felt unlucky, like unless everything went as smoothly as in a dream it would all go wrong.

Another thing was, we hadn't counted on the girl. I looked at Crystal, silently asking her everything, answering my own questions, in some way detached from the specific situation —I wanted to be there, doing this, and I didn't care where or who it was.