~
Got to Get Back
Bill was in his room playing videogames when his mom called out for him.
“Bill~ill!” It was sing-song. She was in a good mood.
“What!?”
“Hey Bill!”
“What’s up!?”
“Are you going to the store?”
“No!”
“Someone’s at the front door for you!”
“I’ll be right there.”
He picked up a blunt from the ashtray, lit it, then hit it a couple of times.
When he opened his bedroom door, the hallway door opened and David came through.
“What’s up, homie?”
“What’s up,” David said, closing the door behind him.
The hallway was dark in the middle of the day, the only light was up ahead, how the sun was hitting the hardwood floor of Bill’s room.
Bill disappeared from his bedroom doorway. Went back to his computer, sat down in his chair, then from over his shoulder said, “What’s up, man?”
For some reason there was a calendar nailed up on the bathroom door. David stepped into his doorway and said, “What’s up?”
“Go ahead and sit down. What you up to?”
The room was small and clean. Every wall had something against it: a bed, a desk and a chair, a bookshelf, the computer unit desk with a chair. The only open space was left in the middle.
The sun was out at that kind of day where it’s breezy but makes everything shine. The blinds over the corner window looked peacock designed. David could see smoke floating in the air through the slits that let sun in.
The walls were painted light blue and the furniture against them were all brown. The room made David think about the beach.
“Nothing,” he had sat down in the chair, looked down at his pant legs and tugged on the creases. “What game is that?”
“Vanguard.”
“What do you do, kill shit?” He shrugged smally.
“Mostly, but I can make people kill shit for me. I mind control’em, or have’em fight clones of themselves. It’s the same shit, quests and stuff.” He turned to him and told him in a voice with face very uncharacteristic: “It’s extremely entertaining.” That was the first time they looked at each other.
They smiled.
Bill picked up the blunt, leaned back in his chair to show it to him. “You wanna hit this?”
He laughed, and breathed at the same time. “No, sir. What’s up with that other shit?”
“Yeah.” He logged his character out, while putting on some music. “How much you want?”
“40.”
Bill pulled out a bottom drawer, stuck his arm in elbow deep, then brought out a small brown box with a wad of tinfoil the shape of a knife sharpener. David leaned forward in the chair looking. The music started to give him goose bumps around the hair stems around the crown of his forehead.
He asked him, “What CD is this?”
Bill stuck a fat piece of heroin on the tinfoil. He told him, “It’s Vikta!” He smirked, and started to make a tooter around a pen.
“Can your computer burn it?”
“Yeah, here: I’ll smoke some of this with you. Happy bon-voyage, or homecoming or some shit.”
Bill took a hit standing up. David stared at all three levels of it: the flame hitting the tinfoil, the tinfoil in Bill’s hand, the smoke going into the tinfoil straw. It made him feel nervous everywhere inside his chest and around his lungs. Bill exhaled a gush of smoke, then asked him, “Your dad pick you up?”
“No.”
“That’s fucked up. I haven’t seen that fool in awhile.” He smiled.
“It’s alright.”
Bill took another hit. While he was holding it in, his big chest out, he rapped along with some of the verse:
“And thanks before I blank into anaphylactic shock. Rock the disco…”
Bill exhaled a steam of smoke. While repositioning the tinfoil in his hands he continued.
His bedroom door was closed—the hallway door was closed. His mom yelled out for him, “Hey Bill!”
He quickly handed everything over to David. Went up to the door, put an ear close to it and listened.
“What’s up?”
“Are you going to the store yet!?”
“Nah! Later!”
He stood there for a moment. He could see himself in the third person. Standing close to the door with an ear to it. He listened some more. He was in his room smoking heroin with David. He felt the first faint waves in his body and brain telling him he was high. He smiled.
He looked back at David: “You’re hitting it wrong.”
David said, “Hold on.”
“You’re fuckin it up.”
He started coughing. “Here.”
He noticed how chalky black David’s hands and fingertips got.
“It’s making my nose itch.”
“Seriously?” Bill sat down almost upright. With the tinfoil, lighter and tooter back in his hands, he asked David politely: “Want some water?”
“Ok.”
“Hold up.”
He got up in a false start, so it took two times, turned the music down, handed everything back to David, then made his way out the room. When he opened his bedroom door he saw the bathroom light on. He shut his door and creeped up to it. Wrapped his arm around the wall to reach in. Turned the fan on and the light off.
When he opened the hallway door his mom’s head snapped around, “You going to the store yet?” She noticed how dopey in the eyes he looked, red around them like an allergy.
“No.” He stared straight ahead at the TV. It was a crafting show. They were smashing up egg shells on a table. One that was big at one end, skinny in the middle, then a little smaller at the other end like a swimming pool. “This some Feng Shui shit?” he laughed. Then stopped behind a chair.
His mom said, “Are you drinking before work?”
He noticed how big the woman’s breasts were that was doing the crafting. Titties, he thought. “David’s home; I’m not going to work today.”
As he turned into the kitchen, his mom told him, “Hurry up and go to the store. I want a soda god damn it.”
He rhymed, “A soda, Yoda yoga flame off the membrane, hurricane kick the gift, bustin’ raw script.”
“Piece of shit.”
“Fuck you.”
The wind blew into Bill’s room. David was resting the back of his neck on top of the chair. His shoulders were snug up inside it. He could feel pores in his face open up and chill. Then he noticed his mouth was open and his top teeth were showing. He felt thin, he couldn’t keep his eyes open. He took a little mental trip down the hallway. Across the dusty rug bunched up at the foot of Bill’s door; cobwebs were in the corners and he imagined outside going through all four seasons and them still being there. He saw the calendar on the bathroom door and it was still on January. The hallway door opened for him but it was like a small alarm: tight with age from winters so when it opened it sounded like someone had budged a dresser. Bill’s mom’s head turned around, (Hi David) and she had a smile on her face that made him think about being outside under the sun, a piece of watermelon on a picnic table cut in two with a thin kitchen knife sticking out of it.
His body jumped in the seat. “What time is it?”
Bill was playing videogames on the computer. He turned around and told him, “You got black shit all over your face.”
He wiped the back of his hands against it. “What time is it?”
“Six. You want some water?”
“Shit, I got to get back.”
He put his neck back on the chair, his head on the wall making a sweaty circle. Something happened with the heroin and the ceiling light bulb, because David could see everything perfect with his eyes underneath his eyelids. The color of the walls changed into a dirty, sandy white. He could see a lot of Bill’s dirty clothes thrown underneath his bed.
His mind started to wave. The sun setting through the blinds was half black, half dull orange, like the southern Iraqi farmlands after three days of shelling. Dots of light were on the blinds in the plume of the peacock. He sat up, grabbed the trashcan, threw up something into it green that looked like the insides of a dirty aquarium.
Bill was in the kitchen popping ice cubes out of the tray. He put them in a tall plastic cup. Rubbing his nose with one hand, he filled the cup with tap water and smiled, enjoying the small secret steam and crack the ice cubes made. He smiled down half eye-lidded at the white of the faucet, the water running from the tap into the cup. Then laughed, something warm inside his chest.
On the way back to his room, his mom asked him if he was going to the store yet. “Nah,” he said, “later!” then shut the door kind of hard.
He walked down the hallway heavy footed. The crawlspace underneath the house had enough room to thump throughout. David heard and felt him coming at the same time, but couldn’t open his eyes like a blindfold of skin.
Bill opened the door. “You throw up inside that shit?”
“Yeah.” David looked weak. Like he was too tired to take a shit.
“Don’t get no shit on my floor. You still got black shit all over your face.”
“Damn. This shit fucked me up.”
“Drink that water!” He unrolled the tooter. “Nice.”
“Hey Bill!” His mom yelled.
“What!?” He barked. But then didn’t like what his face might’ve looked like. Looking over at David; he was still sitting there with his eyes closed.
His mom said, “Are you going to the store now!?”
“Yeah! Jesus! Yo. I got to go to the store for my mom. Want anything?”
“A beer.”
“Ok.”
He shook his head, “No.” He sat up and looked at Bill looking at him. They didn’t like to do that. Sometimes you could see weaknesses: haircuts, jobs, living arrangements. “Damn,” he said, “I got to get back home.”
“It’s cool. Don’t let my mom see you throwing up. I’ll be right back.”
He sat back and closed his eyelids, waiting to see Bill leave from underneath them. David was pouring sweat. By the front door Bill’s mom tried to hand over a bunch of dimes and nickels.
“Come on now,” he told her.
“What? Who cares?”
“Fuck that.” He opened the front door and stood there staring out into the street. “Give me money, no one wants your change.”
(He) Told the streets, What you starin at?
The sewer cap opened up and said, Why you wearin that?
“Who cares?” She told him.
“Give it to me then.”
His mom used two hands to pour the change into his one.
When the front door shuts it makes the whole house shake. David stood up, twice barely; he had to get help from off the arms of the chair. He carried the bag of throw up under his sweater down the hallway like trying to sneak a beer in. The toe of one of his boots caught a waved up portion of the rug. He fell forward, his open palm landed hard against the doorway molding, making the whole house shake. Bill’s mom’s head snapped around, she said, “Jesus, David, you drank too much. I don’t like people doing that in my house.”
David stood there sweating, where his shoulder meets his arm in a dull pain. His arm stretched out like that hid half his face. He said, “I tripped on the rug, sorry.” He let go and saw the blur of the TV. Bill’s mom was staring at him; his mouth hung open, his eyes half open, how bad he was sweating, his shirt around the neck was drenched. She had her hair up and was sitting on the couch wearing a red SDSU college sweater. He made his way to the door moving left to right instead of completely forward.
“I’m going to call the police.”
“No!”
To open the front door he had to try twice. He turned, the knob, pulled up on it. Getting outside he felt a relief: a warm wind. He left the door wide open.
II.
I walked into the liquor store to try and cash my check. Boop-beep, “Is it cool if I cash my check?”
My hand was in my back pocket covering it in case they said no.
Tom, the Middle Eastern storeowner, who is more American than me, said what I say a lot: “Siick…”
“Small ass check,” I said, then “Weak ass job.”
Tom had an assistant. A small, very skinny white guy named Jonathan. He was over at the pornography section looking like a gremlin.
I asked him, “Yo? Want to buy some porno mags off me? I got like three hundred, a buck a piece, no sticky pages.”
He went bug-eyed, blushed, put the magazine he was looking at back on the rack. “Nah,” then laughed something behind his hand.
Tom counted the money out to me in twenties. He asked, “You going to TJ?”
“Hell no.”
“I know some hookers out here, siick…”
“Nice. Seriously?”
“A hundred bucks.”
I scoffed, or whatever I did made my head bounce like when gears catch. “Fuck that shit.”
“Siick…”
Boop-beep. Bill walked into the store.
“Besides, you don’t want me fucking your hookers, they’ll know my dick is bigger, siick…”
Jonathan came up behind the counter with a laugh behind his hand, “Siick… Haha.”
Tom didn’t know how to respond to that, so he put a tight smile on his face and pretended that there was something to look at in the back of the store.
Bill came up to the counter, with a forty of King Cobra and a warm two-liter of Coke.
“What’s up, Bill?”
Tom said, “Siick…” Jonathan said, “Siick…”
Bill chuckled but didn’t look at any of us. He said, “What’s up?” And when he put his hand into his pocket to fish out the money, he closed his eyes.
He looked fucked up, like he had been huffing rubber cement. The skin around his eyes were beet-red.
“You looked fucked up, Bill.”
“I’m faded.”
I wish I was on that shit, I thought, like envying the guy nodding out in a county jail holding cell. “Thanks for letting me borrow that CD, mane, it’s pretty dope.”
“You can have it.”
Jonathan was putting his stuff in the bag: “What CD is it?”
“Usher.”
Bill chuckled on top of his fist. “Nah, nah. It’s Vikta!”
We started walking out. “Thanks, see you fags later.”
Bill started busting up, “Haha, you called them fags!”
“They are.”
“You need a ride?”
“Nah, I’m going to fuck with David—check him out.” He nodded his head towards the payphones. David was lanky, and was moving back and forth like the wind was walking him.
He had on black boots. And his body was feeling hollow like the underneath of the street. There was a panic in his body but the heroin lazyed it. He felt scared. He saw a orange and white cat run by. He thought, Nice Kit-Cat, and after that he was aware of how the heroin changed the color of his face. If he was normal he would’ve followed the cat and tried to pet it. Not too far though, people would start to stare.
I asked Bill, “You guys been smoking PCP?”
“Nope—heroin.” And he smiled and gave me a head nod what’s up. The skin around his eyes look red as if sunglasses protected you from the sun opposite.
“You got any more?”
“How much you want?”
“Forty.”
“Give me twenty minutes.”
“I’ll cruise by in an hour.”
I got in my car and turned the key. The flywheel screamed. Walking in front of my car the noise made Bill jump back against the ice cooler. With my chest close to the steering wheel, my shoulders squared, I smiled my teeth at him through the window.
David was sitting on a bus bench. His mouth wide open, his back against a Mexican advertisement sign: a dude with big white teeth and the number 222-2222. I drove by holding down the horn. I acted with a mad face and he didn’t move. He was able to see everything that was going on underneath his eyelids like an alien. Problem was, everything started to look like a long camera flash; the night falling, the upholstery shop across the street and the flash in the windows from the cars that sped by. He saw me and heard the honk; his soul tried to reach out to it as it was starting to get dark. I was looking at him, and leaning inside to the passenger window rolled halfway down. The white light was like inside of a nuclear explosion. A long flash after slamming two big rocks together.
Bill walked up to him and noticed he had thrown up again. He still had black ash all over his nose and face. The ants at the bus stop had not started working on him yet.
Bill said, “You dead yet? Haha,” his laugh trailed off.
The throw up looked like a bunch of dark water thrown on the street. It took more than 10 seconds for David to answer. I had barely drove off, leaving them there like two bare tress in a light night summer rain.
David’s Adam’s apple moved, then he sighed out his nose. Bill asked him, “What did you do with that bag of throw up?”
He cleared his throat, then weakly said, “I threw it in the creek.”
“As long as the kids don’t get it,” he made a smile that showed his gums, then looked away.
It was night. David with his eyes closed shrugged his shoulders and said, “I got to go home.”
“You can chill at my pad until that shit wears off.”
“No, I can’t.”
“Your wife’s gonna fuck you up.”
“I’ll just tell her I’m drunk, and sleep…”
Bill thought about that, then he saw the bus coming with its worm-like front windows.
“Here comes the 7!” he said, “Yo,” it slowed down while opening its doors, “Get up, fool!”
David made a noise behind his teeth. “Alright,” but before he failed at getting up, Bill reached down to help him up and say goodbye to him at the same time.
Bill walked him up to the door. The bus driver was almost young, in his mid-thirties and you could tell he got laid a lot because his light blue uniform shirt had the top two buttons unbuttoned. Looking at David put a wrinkle on his face. David was doing everything slowly and in a bad way: having to climb up the couple of stairs by putting himself over the handrail; taking out his money and shoving it in the driver’s face. The driver looked over at Bill not pleased. Bill nodded at David and made two fingers like a joint. The doors shut and the hiss of air that went with them. Bill saw the push of the takeoff make David fall face forward into a front seat. The lights inside the bus made all the air inside look yellow. He saw half the people on the bus stare at David. Then the back ones against the windows stare out at him. He spit, turned around then picked up his groceries and walked off. It was a warm night, outside you could smell it.
Two cholos were smoking a joint at the bus stop on the corner of 37th. Sir Vandal and Rambo the 2nd. Not at the bus stop exactly, but close to it. Near the wall of the furniture store. With the big pink and green NO CREDIT NO PROBLEM paintings on the store windows. That had a whole bunch of ESBS tags scratched inside them.
Gang members like these like to stand near the bus stop. The people taking the bus liked to see them. Not just these two, but five, ten, fifteen. They get this awe in their heads, seeing a bunch of gang members hanging out on a street corner.
Normal people didn’t like to use this bus stop, only elderly people, groups of the mentally ill, handicapped and alcoholics. Vandal would wait for the bus to stop, people to get on and off, the bus driver to start checking passes, then get tags up on the windows and sides.
Young kids on city street corners wearing tank tops and jeans, some out on the streets for days with shit stains in their underwear. A whole bunch of gang members lined up on the wall. You look out the window, at how shitty the neighborhood is, little boys and girls who look like the faces of missing children portraits, out there open-mouth laughing with fellow gang members. People who still sag their jeans. Hanging out with one foot on a wall. A gang member couple with their baby, laughing, tripping out on how big its penis is when it’s really a hernia. At night you can see the cherries of whatever they’re smoking, smoldering. Gang members with walking pneumonia cross the street wearing a scarf and smoking a joint.
Sometimes a fight would break out between them where you could catch a glimpse of different fighting styles. For the gang members close to the bus stop was smart. If it looked like the cops were going to swoop, someone could hop on the bus, get off a block or two later, then walk back. People liked to see the cops lining them up: throwing them up against the wall, slapping handcuffs on them like a saggy-shouldered picture of a stereotype, searching them down, patting on their nuts.
Little Rambo said, “Let me hit that.”
Vandal passed him the joint and made a sound like something electric slowing.
Rambo took the joint, then said, “Ho Ho!” then hit it big-lipped.
Vandal told him, “I’ve been working on those new raps.”
Between hits, Lil Rambo said, “Oh yeah?”
Vandal threw his beer down on the sidewalk. “It’s new shit; it goes like this.” He took a B-boy stance, “Tru story:
I’ve seen brothers kill brothers,
my homie’s pops beat on his mother
’til we had to blast him down,
he wasn’t fuckin’ around—
Cops searchin’ the sidewalks,
circlin’ blood dots,
shit stashed on the rooftops,
stuck in the gutter trops—
Chicks get trained on
tryin’ to get their gang on,
12 year olds with tattoos,
necks and arms—
Robbin’ houses for firearms,
backin’ trucks up in gun shops,
police duck from gun shots—
bullets flew through the window
while I was eatin’ a carne asada burrito.
People lost eyes and shit,
young kids start new cliks,
saw the first pubes on my dick
in juvenile hall—
Moms bugged out on the phone call,
hadn’t seen me in two years,
said the answer to her worst fears…
I was alive but a fuck up,
called her a bitch then hung up.”
Towards the end of his rap, Young Rambo clasped his hands together and started beat-boxing. Disappointed, Vandal stopped his rhyme, and seeing the joint hanging out between Rambo’s fingers like that said, “Don’t fuck that shit up, fool!”
Rambo took a quick hit then passed it back. He busted out a rhyme of his own. He took an over-exotic B-boy stance; something like a Robotech would do:
“Yo! It’s Mister Rambo and Vandal
motherfuckers you can’t handle,
you ran-up on me wearin’ shoes
I whooped your ass wearin’ sandals.
Bangin’ that Big Bad, East Side Boy Scouts
the one that whooped your ass after they called lights out.
You came up short but see we heard that about you—
you that type of dude who can only maddog my shoe.
I keep the gat in a dark sock in case it gots to get dumped—
Throw it at a tree stump—”
Vandal interrupted him, “7’s coming.”
Rambo could see its moth windows on the rise.
David had pretty much just died; his whole brain inside was a dark blank. When the bus came to a halt, he fell into the aisle open-mouthed. An elderly woman, who had been sitting across from him staring, startled, let out a sharp shriek as he fell to the floor. Mechanically, like at every bus stop the driver was already letting passengers pile on and off. Bewildered by the scream, then seeing a kid in the aisle, the bus driver shot up out of his seat, forcing an elderly person who was trying to pay to fall backwards down the steps like a potato, letting out a sharp scream on the way down. The bus driver froze, then looked down and saw half of him in the bus, half of him on the street at people’s shoes. Vandal and Rambo 2 were walking up, they heard the scream, looked back, then saw the dude’s head fall out at the bottom of the steps. Young Rambo said, “Damn, homie!” and used a fist to cover the smile that was forming on his mouth. Things were firing off inside his small brain. People behind him started helping him up. Vandal went up to the window, this time with a yellow streaker. The driver, seeing people assist went down to the aisle towards David. The elderly woman who had screamed when David fell, let out another scream when she turned and saw Vandal tagging on the window she was sitting at. He had got up an ESBS VANDAL by the time the bus driver started banging hard against the window. Vandal flipped the window off from where the noise came from; the molded hand one, not the air force kind. Young Rambo said, “Hit my name up too, fool!” A border brother wearing a baseball cap was getting off the back of the bus. He saw Vandal tagging, then saw the window jump from the bus driver hitting it, something like how bass does. He had just got off work and had a red and white cooler in his hand. He said, “Hey! Stop!” words in English that he knew how to use for sure. He made a stride towards Vandal, who now just stood there staring at him. Lil Rambo came up from the side intercepting him. He said, “EastSideBoyScouts!” And from his boney arm, launched a punch that landed his sharp knuckles right on the side of the border brother’s face, like a chalky rock hitting bone. He fell against the bus like a camera on a tripod. Everyone helping up the old man turned around at one same time and stared. Vandal kicked the cooler as hard as he could. People driving down the street saw it fly out from behind the bus and spin through the cool evening air red and white like a pokémon ball. Sirens could be heard. Vandal and Rambo broke out. They ran down the alleys fast. They looked at each other and started laughing. All this was so much for the street corner and street lamps that there was more dust in the air that night than usual. The ambulance pulled up behind the bus, its red and yellow bright strobe lights bouncing off all the windows, throughout the block. Making the scene look like some sort of bizarre funhouse. With help from the bus driver they put David in the back of the ambulance. One paramedic said, “Drug overdose.” Then the other got the horse needle out.
The black that David saw in his brain went so white and bright so fast that he tried to close his eyes even though they still were. Inside of this light, he saw the grey skeletal faces of four phantoms bearing down on him. The inside of their mouths and eye sockets, light behind them bled through. They had on old army helmets, two of them the ones with the single spike sitting on top. The bus driver was outside watching; his arms folded across his chest and had to wobble his head he couldn’t believe it. A surge of energy shot through his body that made him feel faint in the face. As they punched David with the needle he shot up off the stretcher more than a foot in the air. I’ve never seen no shit like that in my life, the bus driver thought. It took all the paramedics to hold David down. A couple of cars that passed by and chanced to see inside thought: What the fuck was that? And: Oh my God! As David shot up in the air from off the stretcher like the Incredible Hulk. David’s wife was at home sitting on the couch watching National Geographic. She had one hand wrapped around the phone, the other moved around her neck making stress marks on her skin similar to a hickey. The television program was about bats in Cuba. The narrator had a special British accent, and was talking about a man who studies bats on the island. “At sixty years old, Professor Garcia is one of the only men who can withstand the humidity of the cave, and the deadly carbon dioxide levels found in caves like these…” etc. It showed the old man sitting down on a rock, the green of the night vision showed him staring back with big, unblinking black eyes like an alien. He waved his net up in the air, and caught one of the thousands of bats that flew over his bald head. David’s son was asleep on the brown apartment carpet, wrapped up in a fluffy little kid blanket. Where is this motherfucker at? she thought. He woke up in a hospital, with a tube tied to his tiny penis. The nurse asked him, “Sir? What’s today’s date?
“Who’s the president of the United States?”
~
Nikolai B. writes surreal, energetic, sometimes rhythmic narratives, and usually about the city. He is currently an Associate Professor of English in the Imperial Valley, and runs a writing workshop in downtown El Centro, called Workshop on 5th (www.workshopon5th.com). From the author: A lot of my narrative content revolves around my experiences navigating the city. I try to give voice to the overlooked, outsider, the delinquent, oversexed, the youth raised by single parents in troubling neighborhoods, all the above for whatever reasons. As far as the aesthetic of my writing is concerned, I still feel invested in things like ‘voice’, and creating imagery that allows my readers to ‘see’. Hopefully my work reflects my early influences, such as Phillips’ Black Tickets, or Selby’s Last Exit to Brooklyn, as well as my relationship with Hip-Hop.