The Life and Times of Innis E. Coxman (12 page)

The
first thing we smelled upon exiting Jay’s Caddy were the industrial fumes of
primo speed hanging in the humidity.

Since
this was Jay’s deal, I waited by the car and smoked on a joint while he did
some reconnaissance. He crept around the side of the house, fighting trash bags
puffing in the breeze to peer into the den. Through a slit in the foil, he saw
Alotta’s husband, Harry “Crazy” Shitz, sleeping soundly on their green canvas
sofa with a muted episode of
Friends
providing the only light in the
room.

Clutching
a 12 gauge like a murderous teddy bear.   

Jay
wheeled his arm for me to come over. I roached the joint and stealthed through
the graveyard of Fords and scrub brush. We circled back behind the house to the
dilapidated tin shed. My bolt cutters razored through the padlock like a hot
knife through butter.

When
we flung the door open it looked like
New Jack City
starring Bill Nye
the Science Guy. There were beakers bubbling with caustic chemicals,
lung-melting vapors frothing from clear plastic containers, interstates of
tubing converging on top of one another, and enough packs of Sudafed to cure a
hospital ward. Our eyes drifted to three black duffle bags in a far corner that
were big enough to smuggle Asians.

We
rushed over and unzipped them with shaking hands, careful to mask our faces
with shirttails so as not to breathe the rotten air. We uncovered more than we
bargained for: all three were filled to the brim with gram-size baggies of
glass—that speed that looks like chips of a bottle after you’ve smashed it over
someone’s head.

Erections
were achieved.

We
looped the duffles on our shoulders—one for Jay, two for me—and hauled ass back
to the Caddy where we threw them in the back seat. I followed them, yelling,
“GO! GO! GO!” at the top of my lungs. I hadn’t had a chance to shut the door.
It slammed back on my shins when Jay peeled down the street.

Next
stop, a shithole.

***

Alotta’s
duplex was a fireball waiting to happen. It’d been built during the 40s and was
smack dab in the middle of the ghetto. One of the oldest structures in the
city, it had a front porch made of boards harvested from retired riverboats. It
ran the length of the building, so loosely put together that it acted as a
doorbell for both apartments; you could hear a mouse crawl over those planks.
Concrete steps in front of the tinderbox had sunk into the Earth over time,
lying six inches below the porch, and God help you if you weren’t paying
attention; first-time visitors unmindful of their steps were treated to a face
full of splinters. A white flowerpot with bright, plastic petals hung from a
hook on one of the beams, doing its best to offset the dead chrysanthemum plants
that lined Alotta’s side of the porch. A puke-green paint job was severely
malnourished by fifty-plus years of exposure to the elements. The broken metal
mailbox on the front post was supposed to read 669, but a rivet on the nine was
fucked so it fell to read 666.

I
would’ve taken that as my sign to turn around if I’d known what was going to
happen.

***

Our
plan was to split the booty into thirds. When we arrived, Jay chucked the bags
on the untidy coffee table in the living room, sending empty Michelob bottles
and the flaming nubs of orange-scented candles plummeting to the carpet. After
stamping out the resulting inferno, we divvied up our plunder, each of us
getting a duffle, Jay plunking a tattooed arm into his to retrieve a baggie. We
left Alotta inspecting hers in the living room while the two of us hurriedly
walked into the kitchen to crush the contents of the plastic with a ladle. As
thanks for helping him with the theft, Jay let me do the honors. He dumped the
powdered cargo on the grubby counter, cutting it into three lines with his
pocket knife. I leaned over and hoovered the channels of transparent crystals
one after the other through a severed Mcfatty’s straw.

My
brain came alive after the first bump.

My
nose fried from the second.

My
face was prickly after the third.

I
shot up from the
formica
ready to choke a Hells Angel
and take his bitch, staggering to the faucet to wet my fingertips and sniff the
droplets to coax the grains down my throat. My pupils were small but my eyes
were huge, taking in strobes of color I hadn’t known existed. Successive waves
of light reverberated around my field of vision like I’d taken a blow to the
face. I was soaring with eagles through clear-blue skies, sharing airspace with
every manner of flying fowl, thinking I’d never come down from the burning
wonder of unknown oxidants mauling my cerebral cortex.

It
was the best glass I’d ever done in my entire drug career.

Harry
Shitz knew his shit and my olfactory singed with appreciation.

Jay
and Alotta snuffled three lines apiece as well, sending us all into the
stratosphere. Alotta was so tweaked that she actually started cleaning up the
layers of pizza boxes and Carby’s sandwich containers that’d started paying
rent on the kitchen floor. Her unwashed coochie-cutters and used-to-be red
halter top flecked through the kitchen performing household chores that’d been
neglected for God knows how long. As she scurried over the linoleum, I couldn’t
help but wince at the sound of her naked feet retracting from the sticky
material.

That
girl was
nasty.

Jay
and I were in the living room on her brown leather couch watching a rerun of
All
in the
Family,
frozen in place by
Archie Bunker’s take on race relations in 1970s America. Alotta materialized at
the doorway, her thin brown hair stuck to her forehead from speed-sweat, the
sunken cheeks rosy from an elevated body temp, with her brown eyes indented
like a skeleton’s. Without so much as a buttery lead-in, she said she wanted a
bigger slice of the pie. Her reasoning behind this astonishing demand:

Since
it was her husband she’d stabbed in the back, she should get a majority of the
spoils.

I
would’ve fainted had it not been for the speed.

Jay
turned to me, doubt slathered across his face with the beginning hints of anger
in his usually deep-blue eyes. His nostrils flared and it wasn’t just from the
glass. For a second, we glared at each other, telepathically agreeing that
Alotta could go fuck herself. But the implications of her declaration were
clear:

Do
it, or get the Crazy Shitz.

I
knew we were treading on thin ice when I’d agreed to deal with this bitch. Then
Jay told her to kiss his dick. 

Our
world.

Was
fucked.  

This
was a serious predicament, good people. We were at odds with an erratic speed
freak whose drug use only intensified her erraticism. If we didn’t cohere to
her terms, she’d tell Harry who stole his product and we’d be forced to go on
the lam. Sure, he’d beat Alotta half to death for hatching the scheme—how would
she
know who stole his speed unless she was in on it?—but at the end of
the day, that was his wife. He’d leave her breathing and her broken bones would
heal. The same would not be said for us.

I
stayed on the couch watching TV, listening to Jay and Alotta argue in the
kitchen, plotting my new life performing donkey porn in a Mexican village if
his interference didn’t produce results.

I
was impressed with his restraint. He didn’t slap her or anything.

He
gave a deep breath—“
WHOOOOOOO!”—
then took it down a notch. Over Archie’s
racist dialogue, I heard him calmly inform that greasy slag how yes, she’d
provided the information, but we actually took the risk; how there was a
shotgun ready to blow our heads off at any moment; how, in light of that news,
we were being nice by not taking the whole load and sticking her in the ground
somewhere; and how yes,
an even three-way split was more than fair
considering all the information placed at her feet and because fuck that slimy
bitch.

Shotgun, goddammit.

His
arguments proved to be fruitless. No matter how well he explained it to her,
that brainless junkie wouldn’t leave it alone. Jay finally gave up on
diplomacy, steering the conversation toward sex. He knew that Alotta would drop
a newborn for a good fuck and her predictability didn’t disappoint. He
suspected that she’d see the light after the speed wore off.

And
if she didn’t, he lived next to a light-yellow cornfield.

They
walked into the living room without explanation, knowing I’d heard every word
from the kitchen. Alotta smiled slyly, saying she’d always wanted to fuck both
of us at the same time.

I’d
always wanted to hump a wolverine before I put my dick in Alotta
Shitz, but if this was the way it had to be for Jay and I to keep our share of
the loot—and our lives—then so be it.

Alotta
stripped out of her shorts and halter top. Jay got naked as well, his clothes
joining hers on the floor. Mine wound up on top of the pile. Jay got ready to
silence Alotta’s mouth with his dick. I donned a rubber and got ready to
silence her ass with mine.

***

We
moved to the couch where Alotta positioned herself on top of me. I cushioned my
head with an armrest as Jay nestled his schlong firmly against her tonsils. I was
buttfucking her from the bottom while he was buried asshole-deep in her throat.
I know this because his asshole was directly above me and I was looking
straight into its ungodly hairiness. I tried to shut my eyes, but the speed
wouldn’t let me.

It
was like watching a grizzly attack a campsite.

Leaning
on the armrest at the other end of the couch was a sad Pink Panther doll with a
pathetic eye dangling from an empty socket. I peered around Alotta’s hips and
sent him an empathetic message. “You’ve seen all this before, haven’t you, old
buddy?” He nodded “Yes” in time to our rhythmic boning before dropping
unceremoniously to the floor.

That
poor, pink bastard.

Alotta
started going ass-to-mouth. She’d jump off and blow me through the rubber as
Jay jerked his meat for a sec. I’d never had a chick do that before. It was
really gross but kinda hot so I was on the fence about it. I got off that
picketed motherfucker when Jay gave her a Frencher.

Jay
was on the brink of eruption. I was on the verge of revulsion. Seeing him and
Alotta share ass goblins made my innards bubble. I couldn’t tell if I was even
still aroused. With great amplitude, he yelled that he was about to gush.

My
wish to avoid a facial brought me back to focus. The abundance of chemicals
ravaging my brain gave me a speech impediment, but I managed to tell him to
unload away from my face.

“It’s
cool, man! I’m about to show you she
does
swallow sometimes! Hahaha!”

Yeah, dude. That’s exactly what I’ve been wanting to know.

***

The
sounds of a rumbling Corolla in Alotta’s driveway made us freeze in position,
Jay’s nuts shrunk in his pelvis, Alotta in mid-thrust on my semi-muddy rod. He
jerked out of her mouth and raced to peer through the nicotine-infused blinds.
Ballsweat rained on my face, invoking a powerful gag from the bottom of my
stomach. Though I wanted to throw up everything since the previous night, I had
to maintain. Apparently, we were about to have pressing business.

Jay
swiveled his head back and forth between Alotta and the window. “What the fuck,
Lotti?! What's Harry doing here?! I thought you said he didn’t know about this
place!”

Her
ass had a vice grip on my manhood. Alotta bounced off of me so fast she took
the Trojan with her, plunging wiry fingers into her cheeks and ripping it out
before popping it at the blinds like a rubberband next to Jay’s noggin. She
stood in the living room, a white trash Wonder Woman, her spread varicosed legs
like maps of California, fists pinned to her bony hips.

“No,
Jay. Of course he knows about this place. He pays for it! What
I
said
was, ‘he didn’t know how to sit on my
face.’
Not without suffocating me,
anyway.” She wagged a gnarled finger at him. “That’s what ya get for trying to
talk to me when yer eatin’ ‘shrooms, baby. I can’t help it if ya hear what ya
wanna hear!”

“Sonofa
bitch,
Lotti!”

We
lunged at the pile of fabric on the floor. Our clothes were thrown in a heap
and we ripped through them trying to find our respective duds. The car door
slammed. Heavy workboots clomped menacingly up the steps and over the loose
boards. I heard the familiar shuck of a 12 gauge followed by a fist beating on
the door.

***

Our
spines stiffened after the first wallop.

Harry’s
bags lay open on the coffee table.

Chemical
fury raced through our bodies.

Naked
and streaming sweat.