Shit grinned and put his thumbs under his jeans’ loose waist. “Yeah, I’m Haskell’s nigger bastard.”
And Eric realized those were the words that the man’s pause after “Haskell” had probably held.
“But you can call me Shit—if you don’t know that already. Now who’re you, again…?”
“I’m Johnston.”
“Damn…!” Shit stood still straighter, grinned more broadly, and pushed his jeans far enough down it was a wonder they didn’t drop to the sidewalk. “Oh, my God! Hey, Eric—yeah, this here is Mr. Johnston! Well, ain’t that somethin’? And he come all the way over here to the Opera to see us? He’s on the Chamber of Commerce, he is! I ain’t seen you since I was a boy with my daddy, Mr. Johnston.” He chuckled. “You remember Dynamite Haskell? Johnston here was actually our boss—yours and mine, Eric—for all the time we was doin’ the garbage runs. ’Cause he was Randal’s boss. Hey—did I fuck your asshole when I was a little kid? I mean, I fucked so many of you big guys, I can’t even remember. Or maybe my daddy stuck his dick up your butthole.” Shit grinned. “He got to a lot of you motherfuckers, even before I did.”
Now Shit hiked up his waist, reached up, and rubbed his thumb knuckle under his nose. Then he turned his hand over, snorted something out into his palm, dropped his hand an inch, looked at it, then took a big lick. “Damn, I love eatin’ that fuckin’ stuff.” Through a grimace, Shit grinned. (Eric could see Shit’s tongue moving in his mouth.) “But that’s ’cause I never got me all civilized, like you, sir. But you know all that about me already—right?”
The man in the suit leaned back a little—but didn’t step away, as the other two had.
The leather-coated one in the red slacks said, “Jesus Fuckin’ Christ! There’re two of ’em!”
The suited man said, “You can eat my fuckin’ shit, if you wanna fish it up out the commode. But you gonna close the damned Opera House—yall understand? Tonight at midnight. And I’m sendin’ some people round to make sure it’s closed, too. Come on.” Looking between the other two, he made a disgusted sound, then turned sharply and walked away, with one of his…guards?
The other leather-coated one took a few frowning steps backwards, as if unable to look away before he turned. Then he swung around and hurried toward the car.
The one in the suit called back without looking, “MacAmon says you two can stay in your apartment upstairs, over the theater—though I sure don’t know what the fuck for. But anybody else—the projectionist, anyone who you got in here—has gotta go. We’re not kiddin’.”
Eric frowned after them. As they got back into their car, he asked Shit, “You know them guys?”
“Johnston’s just a fuckin’ hot air balloon who thinks he’s a heavy turd. Now, why’s he wanna go mess things up for the guys who stay here…?”
Half an hour later, Tank came over from Cave et Aude: Cassandra had said Jay was on the phone from Gilead and wanted to talk with one of them, Eric or Shit. So all three walked from under the Opera House marquee, crossed the street’s pinkish dust, and sauntered up fifteen yards by the corner hitching posts to the tattoo and piercing emporium’s blue-framed plate glass window. Outside, shirt unbuttoned, in his old sneakers with his toes coming through the outside of the left one and no socks, Shit stood, hands hooked by broad thumbs on his jeans’ frayed waist.
Inside, the phone lay on a glass case above a tray of various-sized rings with their ball closings—for ears, nipples, eyebrows, navels, lips. Eric picked it up. “Hello…?”
“Hey, will one of you please turn on your damned phones.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Jay…” With his free hand, Eric reached around to pat his hip pocket—but it wasn’t there. Oh, that’s right. It was upstairs, on the table beside the bed.
With Shit’s.
“You crazy Luddites wanna come out here and do a few honest days work?”
“Huh—?”
“Yeah. Don’t worry. Yall gonna be opened up and runnin’ again in two weeks. But some new people on the Chamber of Commerce Board don’t quite understand how we do things down here. Kyle gotta break out the Historic Landmark file again and convince them that another parkin’ lot down there is not goin’ to bring boomin’ business, wealth, and prosperity to that end of town.”
“Two weeks?” Eric asked. “Wow. I figured closin’ down wasn’t your idea. But this don’t sound like the Chamber of Commerce doin’ no plumbin’ work. ”
“Actually, it ain’t much different. It’s a zonin’ thing—that’s the barrel they got me over. And it’s gonna take two weeks instead of a couple of days to get up off it.”
“But where all the guys gonna sleep if we shut the place up?”
“Don’t worry,” Jay said. “That’s what you always ask. They gonna sleep the same places they slept before they come to the Opera. It’s good weather—half of them would be slippin’ off to catch their shut-eye out under the stars, anyway.”
Eric frowned. The weather hadn’t been that good. “But some of our guys have been livin’ in there half a dozen or more years, now—since before we took over. Suppose there’s a storm—?”
“Get a TV—or at least watch the Weather Channel on somebody else’s. Ain’t gonna be no storms this week and probably not next. Look. You two come on out here. Stay with Mex and me for a while. I figure that’s how long it’ll take to open it up again. You can work on one of the construction crews—you’ll make more money in three days out here than you do in a month in the Opera. We don’t mind puttin’ you up, Hugh, Mex, and me—we get lonesome for some company, anyway. I ain’t even gonna try an’ fuck ya’—you or your ol’ man.”
“Well, if you ain’t gonna at least try, why we comin’ out, then?” Which was something dumb to laugh over. “But I guess we’ll be there.”
Then Eric hung up, said thanks to Cassandra, who sat behind the counter in a voluminous blue muumuu, with her pastels, her oil crayons, drafting new flash: an elaborately scrolled planetary orrery among swooping comets and glittering stars, for someone’s back, which Eric stopped to look at for a whole minute. “Hey, I really like that one…”
(Tank was in the back of the store with a customer, half visible behind a blue and red curtain, her needle humming.)
Cassandra called, “Thanks, sweetheart.”
Then Eric went outside. In the doorway a drop from overhead hit his shoulder. He reached up to rub it away but didn’t even look up. “Jay wants us to come out and stay with him and Mex while the Opera’s closed up. He says it’s for two weeks.”
“Probably he’s waitin for Mr. Kyle to get back from somewhere or other.”
Surprised that Shit didn’t seem more perturbed, Eric shrugged his assent. “Jay says we can do some construction work on the new houses out there. Make us a little money while the fuck films is shut down and we ain’t got nothin’ comin’ in.”
“Well, that’s okay with me.” Shit shifted his weight to the other leg. “If we have to close, we have to close. I guess doin’ some carpentry’ll be okay, long as they don’t put me up no high ladders.”
“Jay knows that,” Eric said.
“Jay knows it,” Shit said. “I just hope them construction fellas we gonna be workin’ with knows it.”
After seconds on the silent street, Eric asked, “Shit, how come you can do that stuff—like with that handful of boogers there; and I can never get it together to think up something like that?”
“What you mean?”
“Before—I was standin’ by the booth there, and nobody was on the street, so I’m pickin’ my nose like I do—like we done since we was kids. Nobody was around. But one of Johnston’s bodyguards or whatever the fuck he was come by and caught me eatin’ it—and said somethin’, about how disgustin’ it was. Now you woulda turned around and done somethin’ right away that’d really gross him out—like you did with Johnston. But after all that, all I could do is was get chills down my shoulders and feel like two cents.”
“You me
an I grossed out that fat fuck?” Shit laughed on the empty sidewalk. “I guess I did, didn’t I? But, hell—I been plannin’ to do that for thirty-five goddam years. What happened to you today happened to me with Johnston the first time, when I was about ten years old, with my daddy.” Shit chuckled again. “Dynamite had to go to Johnston’s office—he was in the Hemmings City Hall, back then—oh, about somethin’, and he took me along. The blinds was all half-closed at the windows and Dynamite’s standin’ in front of Johnston’s desk, talkin’ to him about somethin’, and I’m standin’ a little back and kind of beside him, just listenin’ and watchin’ and not thinkin’, and doin’ the same thing you was. Suddenly from behind his desk, Johnston yelled at me to cut it the fuck out! My ears got so fuckin’ hot, I ’bout pissed my pants. When we was outside, I thought Dynamite was gonna be mad, but he just grinned and gimme a hug. Soon as we got in the truck, he laughed and told me I just had to be careful and choose who I did my nose pickin’ around—that it was okay with Mex and Jay and people who liked me and didn’t care. That’s when I decided someday I was gonna really gross out that motherfucker Johnston! And here, thirty-five years later, I got my chance—that’s all.” Shit chuckled again. “See, that’s the difference between a big city and a little town like Hemmings, Runcible, or Diamond Harbor, where you know everybody all your life—even if you don’t see ’em for ten, twenty years or so.”
“Oh…” Eric frowned—wondering if that was, indeed, the difference.
“Funny, though.” As they returned to the Opera, Shit put his hands in his torn back pockets and looked at the ground. “Now, what I was thinkin’, about the time you asked me, is that it didn’t probably mean nothin’ to the mean-ass motherfucker after all. He was just the kind of guy who liked to yell at a damned kid. Maybe he still does. Probably he thought that’s how you were supposed to treat ’im.” Shit sucked his teeth. “And after what I just done, I’m sure he don’t think no better of me than he did—that’s for certain. Still, I’m glad I did it.”
Eric said, “Me too…” Though he wondered why.
Back at the Opera, they told laconic Myron that, starting at midnight, he had (at least) the week off—if not more.
With light out the side of the projector flickering on his vest and on his black glasses frames, Myron asked, “Am I out of a job?”
“I don’t know,” Eric said. “Jay says he’s gonna try and have it open in two weeks.”
Myron said, “It was closed for two months just before you guys took it over. Maybe he can get Kyle to help him. When the two of them work together, they can keep Johnston on his fuckin’ leash. But Jay can’t do that stuff hisself.”
Before they helped Myron shut down the projectors, Shit went through the orchestra and Eric prowled the first and second balconies to tell the regulars the place would be closed for a while and they had to get out.
(“Sure. That’s okay.” Shit told Jeremy and Owen, who were brothers. “If you got stuff stashed in here we don’t know about, and you ain’t gonna need it in the next couple o’ weeks, leave it. It’ll be here when you get back.” But Eric felt uncomfortable. Suppose they didn’t open the place up again…?
(Or there was a storm.
(Or at least a rain.
(There’d been enough of it already that month.)
Then Eric put their work shoes, work gloves, some socks and underwear, their electric toothbrush, and Shit’s big bar of oatmeal soap (“See, that’s how you know I’m a faggot. ’Cause I use a special soap. It ain’t just ’cause I eat my snot—and yours”), and Eric’s Spinoza, all into the green knapsack.
Next morning, while a dozen guys wandered out from under the Opera House marquee, three to amble up the street, five to wander down, and four to stand around watching, including the nineteen-year-old farm-boy, Pete, with his blond ponytail and no shirt and the short heavy black girl with the wild head of hair, Penny, in bathroom thongs and short shorts, whom he’d picked up when she’d hidden from someone who’d brought her to Turpens’ rear parking lot. Generally, Pete moved around the back rows of the Opera with pudgy Penny tucked under his arm. Eric had explained to them: “Takin’ a little money—fifty, a hundred, a hundred-fifty—is fine, long as nobody starts complainin’. Do what you do.” Eric still thought of it as five, ten, fifteen…“Just remember, this here is for public sex—not private. If either one of you gets upset by people sittin’ around and watchin, pullin’ on their dicks, even coppin’ a feel now and then, that just means yall in the wrong place—understand?” To which Penny said, “Hey, don’ worry about me—I got this place down. Half the time I’m pimpin’ him out.” And Pete looked sheepish.
Eric and Shit pulled the metal gates down over the front and padlocked the place up about as tight as it could be.
Will—the freckled black guy who wore some kind of S&M leather harness instead of a shirt and wandered around the theater barefoot and wore a pair of ancient black jeans that were so raggedy Eric was pretty sure that, outside, a grumpy policeman might decide to pick him up within hours because you could always see most of his dick through the rips—strolled up and asked, “Hey, you want some help pullin’ down the gate there?” Will had come to Diamond Harbor about ten years after Eric, and had started off with the cabin in the Dump. But one day he’d wandered out of it and never come back, living homeless around the Runcible docks for the next decade—which basically meant in the Opera House. (Will had a condition once called hebephrenia—too lazy or confused to wash or keep clean in any way—though the medication Dr. Greene brought him for it every week improved it greatly.)
“Naw,” Eric said. “It’s okay.” That morning, Will smelled strongly of old urine—though somehow, he had his fans in the theater. Still, Eric wondered, where is a guy like that going to go?
With Shit carrying the knapsack by one strap over his arm, they caught the six-thirty bus up to the Harbor and waited for the scow at the Gilead Boat Dock.
Because it was Friday, Ed and eleven-year-old Hannibal were doing a stint for Jay and Mex that weekend (as they did now, time to time) on the Gilead II. In his sleeveless army shirt, Hannibal darted around the boat like a dragonfly, stacking luggage, tying and untying ropes, answering questions while Ed stood in the wheelhouse. Sure, Hannibal was kind of off limits; but, with his jeans rolled up his brown calves, his bare feet and his shoulders struck with droplets from a wave that had just splatted the boat’s front, Hannibal was as cute as a button.
“Damn.” Shit nudged Eric with his elbow. “I’m glad I ain’t no goddam pedophile. I’d wanna fuck that kid like there was no tomorrow. What we gonna do when him and his friends come down tryin’ to sneak into the Opera?”
“Same thing we do when any other kids comes in there,” Eric said. “We gonna give ’em a free condom and a nice seat down in the front on Easy Street—” which was the regulars’ nickname for the area to the side of the sprawling orchestra for those men who didn’t particularly want to be bothered by sexual advances from anyone (on the opposite side to the area in the back, nicknamed Gorgonzola Alley, where they tried to herd together Ruddy, Will, Pete, and Al—when he chose to sit downstairs—with most of the other uncut fellows; and where, yes, more than half of the action went on)—“and leave ’em alone. That’s if his big brother, Cap’n Ed, don’t figure out he’s snuck in there, come in, and drag his ass on home. Then, if they wanna come back, we tell em like we do anybody else what looks even halfway decent: they got to be ready to put out or pay for their tickets, one. Then we keep tabs on ’em. And get ours when they ain’t busy. That’s all.”
“Oh, you’re so damned practical!” Shit grinned. “You know—” he turned to lean on the rail, squinting across froth and wavelets, their southwest slopes—a thousand-thousand, appearing and disappearing, across the sea—violet in nets of green—“we didn’t really have to come out to Gilead. We could’a just shut up the place and gone upstairs in the apartment and taken ourselves a nice week-long vacation. Henry’d give us credit at
the supermarket, if we asked. You know that. It could’ve been interestin’, climbin’ into bed together and holdin’ each other and tongue-fuckin’ you till my goddam jawbone was sore. I wouldn’t ’a’ gotten up for a week, not even to take a piss. I’d’a given it all to you and let you carry it into the john to get rid of it for us both. Oh, I might’a gotten up to take a shit, now and then—”
“—and, yeah, I could make you soup and fry you up chopped meat, and make you some tomato salad.”
Shit grinned back, narrowing his eyes. “I’d make the coffee.”
“Oh. Well, then—I guess that would be all right, then.” Eric looked at his tattooed forearms on the rail, fists meshed above the foam. Cassandra had done as nice a job on him as she’d done on Jay. White planks at the boat’s side sloped into the sea. (The Gilead II was an actual ferry that could carry four pickups, though there was only one on it today.) “You know I like makin’ you breakfast in bed—or bringin’ you a Coca-Cola and all that.”
“I know you do. I like you likin’ it, too.” Shit slid nearer. “’Cause it makes you horny. When you do it, I can count on layin’ back and gettin’ a real good suck in five minutes. I mean, nice and slow, and no hurry, the kind my daddy used to like you to give ’im and I used to like watchin’. The idea that somebody likes takin’ care of me, and wants me to lay out, and take it easy—”
“Well, that’s ’cause you work so goddam hard all the time. ’Cause you don’t like to do them top two balconies, in the rest of the place you work like a motherfucker—”
“Father-fucker, please…”
“You work like a nigger down in the orchestra and in the downstairs lounge and everything. You get me feelin’ all guilty.”
“Well, das’ ’cause I’s a nigger, Mr. Whitefeller.” Shit snorted, dug in his nose. “Man, you know your nigger, too. If I’m gonna work at all, I like to work hard. That’s just me.” He took his finger out, looked at it, then offered his hand to Eric.