Excerpt from: “Hitchhiking in Boston”
A cab pulls to the side and stops. He assumes that I am interested in a ride. They often mistake the thumb in the air of the urban hitchhiker for the taxicab hailing type of person. Especially with my age and manner of formal dress, they automatically assume that I am well off. Well to do. After a minute of him blocking my path, I start to get irritated. “Hey, move it there buddy. I'm trying to flag a ride here!” The African cab driver leans across the automobile. He rolls the window down.
“Do you want a ride or not?” He yells.
“Where do you sleep at night?” I scream.
“Screw you, buddy!” He pulls away, screeching the tires.
The psychedelic images fill my mind. That's a funny word: psychedelic. The snowflakes fall onto my face and the people keep going into the subway like stars falling into a black hole. My mind relaxes and slips into a transcendental state. All of the straight lines converge into a single point.
“We are heading to Neptune!” I state boldly in the front seat of a passenger car. “Thank goodness you picked me up,” I say. “A crazy African taxi driver tried to run me down just before you got here.”
“Did you get a license number? What cab company was it?”
“Why American Cab. And the number was 1374. I will be phoning the authorities immediately upon my release from your service.”
“My service.”
“Never you mind. Keep your attention to the road.”
“Where are you going? Where can I take you,” she asked. The young lady was heavy set and wearing a professional business suit.
“Ha ha ha,” I laugh. “I could do this all day just hitting the ping pong ball!”
“Excuse me? Where do you need to go? You looked so cold out there on the corner.”
“Yes yes. It has been a particularly rough winter.” I am cogent for the first time that she is giving me a ride to my destination. I blurt out, “Fenway.”
She asks, “Did you want to go to the Fenway area? Kenmore?”
“Yes. Of course. What do I look like? A commoner living in the suburbs? Or worse, Cambridge?”
“Oh, no. No. I wasn't implying — “
I cut her speech off. My eyes stare at her short, chubby legs working the pedals. The gold rings on her fingers will need to be cut off because the fat has swallowed them completely. I pull out my pocketknife to scrape the black gunk out from under my fingers. Before I open the knife, I realize that I can't do it right now. Her fake blondish brown hair is held by AquaNet, and lots of it. She wears too much make-up. Her chubby cheeks would probably be red enough without all the make-up.
“So, where you from?” I ask with a shred of interest.
“Oh. Not from here.” She moans. “I'm from North Carolina.”
Everyone is so happy not to be from Boston. They think Bostonians can't drive.
“I lived in Winston-Salem for a bit.” I state to make the conversation roll.
“Don't you just love the weather there? It's pleasant all year round.”
And this is what people talk about when it's “small talk.” They talk about the weather.
“Yes. Lovely.”
She turns the car down a street that heads toward the Fenway area.
“How long have you been hitchhiking in Boston?” She asks me with a look of concern that I cannot afford transit on the subway.
“For ten years, I reckon.”
“Have you ever had anything bad happen? Anyone ever pull a gun on you?”
I smile and think about the time that a young lady showed me her breast. “No, never a gun. Other things have been pulled out on me, but never a gun or knife. It's much safer than one would imagine.”
“Well, not for a woman. This is still a big city. I wouldn't dare.” She turns the car down Glouchester Street and the ride is over before it began. Like an interstate love affair, I exit the red two-door Geo Metro and bid her “adieu.” She offers me good luck tidings.
Excerpt from: “The Mortician”
An hour later, Dave arrived at Solteris' house.
Solteris looked sleepy with large black bags hanging under his large eyes. His beard was unkempt and long. Wearing dirty jeans and a striped sweater, he grasped Dave's hand at the door.
Again, they sat on the porch. This time the wife did not appear.
“Diego's body is at Mass General.”
“Okay.” It didn't seem to register in Dave's brain what that meant.
“So you'll need to contact them to pick up the body.”
“Of course.”
“Let's go to the back yard and discuss location for burial.”
“Sounds good.”
They stood up and walked around the Victorian. The backyard was large for New England, spanning about five hundred square feet. There was a grape vine and trestle hanging over the back edge of the grass. Next to the garage was a set of tools: rake, shovel, and a trash barrel. On the far left side of the yard, near the fence, was a small flower garden.
“I don't want to disturb the ground underneath my grape vines. So I was thinking of making a plot next to the garage.”
“Okay. Do you want it parallel?”
“No, I was thinking perpendicular.” Dave nodded in agreement. Solteris pulled his hair back and put it into a pony tail. The long, straight strands of gray hair didn't stay put, and some of them brushed against his eyes and cheeks.
“What time on Thursday?”
“How about noon?”
“Okay.” Dave wasn't writing any of this down, which concerned Solteris. But he assumed that Dave had done hundreds of these home burials.
Excerpt from: “The Dancer”
I am sitting on the couch. In front of me, Andre is about to spike his vein with a needle full of heroin that he just got from Afghanistan. This is not my apartment. I have never been here before, but some of the people in the room, I know. On the coffee table, there are the usual assortment of ash trays, lighters, cigarettes, cell phones, car keys, newspapers, cups, and sunglasses.
“Hey Dave, I hear your wife is a stripper.” Andre says from the large chair.
“Yep. She is a dancer.” I subtlety try to correct him. Gia is a professional dancer.
“Where does she dance?”
“Why should I tell you? So you can go check her out?”
Andre keeps quiet.
“That's what I thought. It's different when it's someone's wife or daughter that you actually know.” I'm getting a little hot under the collar. I'm getting impatient. I'm waiting for my shot.
A cell phone rings and the sober guys check to see if it is their phone. The one on the coffee table is green and ringing. I open the flip phone and say, “Hello.” I don't even check to see if it is Gia or not. I should be covering my steps. If she knew that I was at a dope dealer's apartment, she would leave me immediately and take Sammy with her.
“Daddy!” Sammy's voice travels through space and time. I can almost imagine the signal leaving the house, up into the satellite in space, and back down to the ghetto.
“Hey, how's my little guy.” I laugh and stand up.
“Are you coming home soon?” Sammy asks.
“Yeah, sure.” I smile and laugh.
Sammy starts to hand the phone off. “Mama wants to talk to you.”
”Okay, put her on the phone.”
Gia asks, “Did you call me?”
“No. What's up?”
“Oh, Sammy just handed me the phone. Where are you?”
I stumble. “At the grocery store, we needed eggs and milk.”
“No we don't. I just went to the store yesterday.”
“I ate them all.”
“You're so weird. You ate a dozen eggs in twenty-four hours.”
I know she isn't buying my grocery store lie. But she is laughing and that means I'm off the hook for the moment.
“All right. I'll see you around six to take me to work?” She dictates.
“Sure. I'll be home way before then.” I tell her that I love her and close the phone.
Instead of setting the phone on the coffee table, I slip it back into my pocket. Quickly, I take my seat back on the couch.
Jesse hands me the needle, loaded with the brown viscous mixture of heroin and water.
I stand up and walk away from it. “No thanks. Not today.” I wave my hand at the needle.
“Where are you going,” Jesse says to me in Spanish. “Donde va?”
“That was my wife. I have to take care of my baby tonight. I can't be high.” It's the truth, which makes them mock me even more. Andre makes the whip-cracking noise, as if I am pussy-whipped.
I shrug my shoulders and exit the front door. I walk down the steps of the crappy apartment complex and drive to the nearest convenience store to my house. I pick up eggs and milk, realizing only after I have paid for the items that the plastic bag will give my lie away.
I get back in the car and drive to the grocery store that's five minutes farther away. I look at my watch. It is four-thirty. I browse through the aisles, looking for any kind of food that we might need, including peanut butter and jelly. Sammy needs diapers, too.
