I wake up with my heart pounding and an ineffable feeling of unease. Suddenly the walls seem like they’re gonna collapse and bury me alive. Maybe I’ll walk around the neighborhood for a bit, breathe some relatively fresh air, unwind.
It’s been weeks, no months since the last time I went walking at night around here. I cross the street, walk past the all-night deli further up the block. The garish lights of massage parlors, head shops, and sex shops spill on the sidewalks, and I walk through them, into the shadows, into them again. It’s four in the morning, so the last barflies have long gone home, and only the stragglers are on the streets. The stragglers and the prostitutes. Mercedes and BMWs and Astrovans drive past with leering, lusty eyes inside; the busty mulattas and peroxide blondes do their routines on center stage. Nagging Regret and Tragedy are waiting in the wings for their cues; I walk through the rafters, into the nether regions.
I’m dressed in dark sweats and no one bothers me, not even the hoes. They accost just about anybody, as long as they can smell green. Guess I’m not white enough for them. Guess a guy that looks like he belongs in their territory isn’t exactly what their pimps would call a cash cow. They whistle and click their tongues at passing cars. Up ahead a Jaguar pulls over in a bus stop, rolls down the passenger side window. A mulatta leans in, takes one look at the driver and walks back to her triad. “Uh uh.. I ain’t goin with no nigga!” Another girl, a white one, walks up to the purring Jag and leans in. She’s gesturing, upping the ante, and soon the two drive off together. I’d always thought that these girls would go off with anybody for the right amount of money - but it seems they too have their choice of johns.
Up by the transvestite and boy hustlers I make a U-turn and walk back in the direction of my apartment. I stop in a liquor store to get an iced tea. A haggard man in rags is ahead of me, at the register. He has a messy brown beard, wisps of hair on a sun burnt dome, cherry red skin. He smells like stale gym clothes and liquor.
“You sell out of pack?” he asks in a high register - too high for his corpulence.
That voice sounds familiar, but I can’t quite place it. Maybe it’s one of the freaks from the cafe, from my former life. The counterman pulls out a few open packs and says, “Yeah. We got regular, light, menthol...”
“Gimme the menthol. A couple,” says the man in rags, then places a quarter down on the counter with grime caked hands.
“Thirty cent. It’s 15 a smoke.”
The man pats his various pockets in his mountain of clothes, and the counterman, tapping his hand on the register says, “Don’t worry about it. Just get me next time.” The bundle of crusty rags walks out. As I pay for my iced tea the counterman says to me, “Those fuckin homeless freaks stink up the store if they’re in here for more than a few minutes.”
“Yeah,” I say, pay and leave.
I look to the left, then the right, and see the guy from the store up ahead. He’s stumbling, stopping every few feet to pick up butts from the ground, which he places in a metal tin. I follow behind him until he sits down on some steps in front of a building. I keep walking, trying not to slacken my pace, to let him on to the fact that I’m tailing him. With his unlit cig in his hands, he sits in a bundle, looking straight ahead of him.
“Gotta light?” he asks as I pass by.
I reach in my pockets, sure that I have a book of matches or something for the guy. “Yeah, take this,” I say and hand him a book. He grabs it, mutters “Thanks” and strikes a little ball of fire, sucks on his menthol cig. More than ever I’m convinced that I know this cat. What is it?
“Do I know you, man?” I ask.
“Miguel. A course you do,” he says. “I uze to be your boss,” he says, his alcoholic breath striking me.
“Pepe?” I stand back into the orange spill of the street lamp. Then I step closer. “Pepe? Is that you?” His eyes are slit, bloodshot.
“Who dya esspect? Oliver Twist?”
“Damn Pepe! What the hell happened to you?” I kneel down, so as not to tower over him.
“What happened to me? My world collapsed around me. Thaz what happened to me.”
I sit next to him on the outcropping. “Is this... I mean... how long have you been like this?”
“Days, months... I don count anymore.”
“So... like after Sealed ASS...”
“Miguel. That job waz everthing to me.” From his pocket he pulls out a plastic pint of vodka and takes a pull.
“But Pepe... shit. I’m shocked to see you out here like this.”
“Miguel. Could you see yousef where you are now sizz months ago?”
“No... but, this is so drastic. I hate seeing you like this. So miserable.”
“When Sternislouse made his dirty proposal, thaz when it all happened. He cut my salary firs, then he fired me. I lost my job, my life, my will to live. It just seemed like a joke... all of it. I started hitting the bottle,” he says, then takes another swig, “and my life is an alcoholic blur. I can’t see things anymore, and that’s fine by me. I don wanna see anything. None of my problems.”
“What happened to you? You used to be so optimistic! I used to laugh, almost, at your optimism. I always thought, where does that guy get all his energy from?”
Pepe just grunts and stares ahead at a group of whores walking past. Then he shakes his head.
“Remember...” I ask, “that book you left behind in the office? The Seven Steps to...”
“Sussess and Popularity.”
“Yeah. It said: step one, have a good attitude.”
“Bullshit.”
I laugh despite myself. “I could’ve told you that.”
“Some people are juz shit. You won change them or your life with happy thoughts.”
“What was that you said earlier about Sternislouse?”
“I don unnerstan...”
“You said something about a proposal.”
“Oh, that. You probly know all about that now.”
“No. He didn’t tell me anything about a proposal.”
“Sternislouse! A course he wouldn tell you! Haven you met Zilvia?”
“Sylvia? She’s beginning to say things...”
Pepe takes another pull from the bottle and says, “Sternislouse invited me and Rosa - my wife, by the way - to an extenned weekend outing at his cabin in the Sierra Nevadas. It waz all very strange... but I had so much respect for Sternislouse that I waz blind to his intenzins. A course, I noticed how he made sly glances at
He finishes his last drag on the menthol and flips it into the street.
“We wen walking one day, and somehow Sternislouse and I got way up ahead of Rosa and Sylvia. He began saying things abou Zilvia, how they’d been married so long, how it’s only natural that ‘passion dries up’... to put it in his words. ‘Pepe?’ he sez, ‘You seem like an intellgint man.’ ‘You seem like you understand the affairs of the flesh. To cut to the chase, Zilvia and I have an understanding. We can see whomever we want’. But I still din get what he was driving at. Then he sez, ‘Pepe. Don be so stubborn... she likes you!’ I turned around and saw the two of them coming up behind us and I got nervous and said I had to piss. I took off into the woods and found a little spot to go. I jus din wanna face the reality that Sternislouse was laying on me. In front of me was a pretty bush with fleshy leaves. I don know why, but I stopped to touch it and admire its grace. Then I unzipped my pants and pissed all over it.”
“So Sternislouse, what was he proposing... you and Sylvia...”
“He waz affer
“But... I mean... were Sternislouse and Rosa having an affair?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“But you don’t know? She never told you?”
“I’m jus positive. I have a nose for that kind of stuff.”
“So this is when Sternislouse fired you.”
“He said my attitude was ‘out of line’. I told him he could go fuck himself, the best thing I’ve ever done. An he fired me. He jus came in a few days later an fired me. I went home, got in a huge fight with Rosa who denied everything an found myself wandering that night through the streets. And I haven’t been back since.”
“Pepe, man. You could be exaggerating this whole thing. Maybe
“I don have anything, Miguel. I’m ruined. I won turn back, affer the fight with
“What on earth are you talking about? What letters?”
“Anonmis letters that we kept getting at the office. Warning us of the lies an the corruption. I kep one, though. I call the number.”
“You’re not making any sense man. You gotta sober up. You’re gonna kill yourself.”
“Fugg you...”
“Pepe. You gotta let me help you. What do you need? Here,” I say stuffing my hands in my pockets. I pull out a couple
He takes the bills and grunts again.
“I’m serious Pepe...”
He reeks so badly of cheap vodka and street scum I’m getting sick. He starts swaying, then plants his grimy hand on the ground and pushes himself up.
“I don’t need you fuggin handouts you punk,” and he throws the bills back at me and stumbles off, back where he came from. “Dat Sternlouse kid is helping me out.” He grumbles the rest of his sentence and disappears around the corner. I pick up the bills and walk back to my apartment. With each step I take I want to tell myself that Pepe has brought this all on himself. I want to think that, but I can’t help feeling complicit in some way.
