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He had been a fool to think he could leave this seamy world and find happiness with a good woman on a quiet suburban street. There was that thing called karma, which he had not factored into his plan. Mel had hurt a lot of women before meeting Adrienne. As payback, God had given him a brief taste of happiness, then snatched it back. Mel knew when he was beaten. The gutter was beckoning, and who was he to fight God’s will?
Big Boy took out a cigarette and crumpled the empty pack in his gigantic hand. He leered across the table at Debra and then focused on Mel. “So, when you goin’ back with your wife, boy? When you movin’ out?” Big Boy gave Debra another meaningful leer.
Melvin looked at his sister, who was staring fixedly at the cards in her hand. So, she was fucking Big Boy now. He gave Big Boy a warning glance. Back off. The huge man grunted and let it go. He had made his point to Debra.
Mel won the next two games. After slowly counting out a profit of sixty-five single dollar bills under Big Boy’s malevolent stare, he rose and winked at Hot Pink. “I’ll see you soon, Lillian.”
In the 1980s Mel had sniffed coke just for fun, but then the drug scene started to bore him, and he gave it up for over a decade. In the dark days after Delilah’s death, when his wife would not speak to him, Mel had gone searching for the white powder again. The drug scene had changed. There was nothing fun about it now. Teenage dealers had replaced grown men. They didn’t chitchat while doing business, and most of them were tense and dangerous.
Mel grabbed his coat out of the hall closet, kissed Debra on the cheek, waved good-bye to the rest of the crowd, and left the apartment in a hurry.
There was a ten-minute wait for the only rattling, piss-stained elevator that was working, and Mel tapped his foot impatiently. As he rode down to the lobby, he felt a moment of panic. Suppose Little Jimmy had been arrested? Or worse
, what if there had just been a whole sweep of the area, and there was nothing left to buy? Mel left the building and walked quickly through the cold winter night until he reached 106th and Amsterdam. He turned the last corner and breathed a sigh of relief.
Little Jimmy was in his usual spot. Mel’s aunt had raised Mel and Debra in the same building where Little Jimmy’s parents used to live. Mel easily remembered the day the boy was born.
Little Jimmy’s father had just been arrested for armed robbery, and while his mother stood in front of the patrol car, begging the police to let her husband go, her water broke right there in the street. They placed Little Jimmy’s mother on her back in the front seat of the car, and she lay there moaning and groaning until an ambulance arrived. Her husband went off in one direction and the ambulance in another.
Both Little Jimmy’s parents were dead now, and he supported himself by selling drugs on the corner. The kid would have to be about eighteen years old, but Mel didn’t know for sure. Little Jimmy didn’t like to talk, and he never smiled. Mel pulled out fifty dollars of his winnings and palmed the bills into his fist.
“How many?” asked Little Jimmy.
“Half a gram.”
The transaction was completed in seconds.
Mel had barely slipped the envelope in his pocket when a young woman who had been leaning against a parked car started toward him. She smiled hesitantly, but when Mel gave her an impatient jerk of the head, her walk turned into a semi-jog. Mel was relieved. Ducking alone in doorways to blow was no fun at all. There was nobody to talk to, and every footstep sounded like that of a cop.
“My name is Juana,” she said.
Mel shrugged. “Where we goin’?”
“My girlfriend’s house down the block.”
“She home?” Mel asked.
The woman nodded. They passed under a streetlight, and Mel got a good look at her. Juana couldn’t have been more than twenty. At one time she had probably been a good-looking Puerto Rican girl, but now she was just a burnt-out crack whore. Mel felt in his pocket. Shit! He didn’t have any condoms. There was no way he was going to share his stuff without getting something in return. “We gotta stop and get some beer,” Mel said.
They ducked into the nearest bodega, which was surprisingly crowded for a Sunday night. It was a tiny store with four aisles, crammed with dusty cans of food and cleaning products. The young man behind the counter was selling loose cigarettes to a line of teenage boys who were rapping, roughhousing, and trying everything else they could think of to impress the baby-faced girls who hung on their arms.
Juana stood with them, never taking her eyes off Mel as he sped down an aisle and picked out four quarts of cold malt liquor. The teenagers pushed and shoved one another out of the store as Mel reached the counter. The clerk rang up the beer.
“Let me get four rubbers,” Mel said.
The man turned around and counted out the condoms from a huge box behind him. He threw the foil-wrapped packets on the counter and spoke rapid Spanish to Juana. Mel thought he heard the word negro but wasn’t sure.
“Mind your business,” Juana said to the counterman in English.
Juana’s face was red as they left the store. Mel carried the bag, and she fished around in her pocketbook until they reached a dilapidated four-story building half a block away. She pulled out a key and turned to face him. “You got cigarettes ?”
He nodded.
She opened the door and started running up the stairs. Mel closed the front door, waited for the lock to snap in place, and followed. Juana was unlocking the door to the second-floor rear apartment. When she put the key back in her pocketbook, Mel took out his knife and put a finger to his lips. Juana looked bored with the routine, but Mel didn’t care. He had not forgotten the rules. This could be a setup. He pressed his ear against the wooden door but there was no noise inside.
“Where’s your friend?” he asked.
Juana shrugged. “I guess she went out.”
