'Whaddaya want?'
I whirled, holding my hand over my mouth and nose as my gag reflex went into action again. A large black man wearing only a pair of pyjama bottoms was standing in the doorway to the bedroom. We stared at each other curiously.
'Whaddaya want?' he asked me again.
'I'm looking for Joe,' I said from behind my hand.
'I'm Joe.' He scratched his face and I saw a thin line of blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.
'Wrong Joe,' I said, cursing Priscilla. She knew goddamm well, the con artist. What did she think, that I'd forget about finding Joe and curl up with this guy instead? Yeah, that was Priscilla all over. A Joe for a Joe, fair deal. 'The Joe I'm looking for is my brother.'
'I'm a brother.'
'Yeah. You're bleeding.'
He touched his mouth and looked dully at his fingers. 'I'm blood.'
I nodded. 'Well, if you see a white guy named Joe, he's my brother. Tell him China was looking for him.'
'China.'
'Right. China.'
'China's something real fragile. Could break.' His expression altered slightly and that same kind of recognition that had passed between me and the cop in the patrol car seemed to pass between us now in Priscilla's stinking kitchen.
I glanced at the rotting hamburger on the counter and suddenly it didn't look like rotting meat any more than the man standing in the doorway of Priscilla's bedroom looked like another junkie, or even a human being. He tilted his head and studied me, his eyes narrowing, and it all seemed to be going in slow motion, that underwater feeling again.
'If you ain't in some kinda big hurry, why don't you hang around,' he said. 'Here all by myself. Not too interesting, nobody to rap with. Bet you got a lot of stuff you could rap about.'
Yeah, he was probably craving to find out if I'd read any good books lately. I opened my mouth to say something and the stink hit me again in the back of the throat.
'Whaddaya say, you stick around here for a while. I don't bite. 'Less I'm invited to.'
I wanted to ask him what he'd bitten just recently. He touched his lip as though he'd been reading my mind and shrugged. I took a step back. He didn't seem awfully junked up any more and it occurred to me that it was strange that he wasn't with Priscilla instead of here, all by himself.
Maybe, I thought suddenly, he was waiting for someone. Maybe Joe was supposed to be here after all, maybe he was supposed to come here for some reason and I'd just arrived ahead of him.
I swallowed against the stink, almost choked again, and said, 'Hey, did Priscilla tell you she had a friend coming by, a guy named Joe, or just a guy maybe? I mean, have you been waiting for someone?'
'Just you, babe.'
I'd heard that line once or twice but it never sounded so true as it did just then. The kid's words suddenly came back to me. This is Priscilla's. I was here last night . Farmer must have run right over after I'd seen him, to tell her I was looking for Joe. So she decided to send me on a trip to nowhere, with Farmer and the rest of them in on it, playing out the little charade of meeting her today so I could ask her about Joe and she could run this ramadoola on me. But why? What was the point?
'No, man,' I said, taking another step back. 'Not me.'
'You sure about that?' The voice was smooth enough to slip on, like glare ice. Ice. It was chilly in the apartment, but he didn't seem to feel it. 'Must be something I can help you with.'
Outside there was the sound of a train approaching in the distance. In a few moments, you wouldn't be able to hear anything for the roar of the train passing.
I turned and fled out to the porch. The dead-meat smell seemed to follow me as I galloped back down the stairs and woke the kid still hanging in the banister. 'Let's go, let's get out of here.'
The train was thundering past as I shoved him back into the car and pulled out.
'You find Joe?' he shouted as we bounced across the parking lot.
'Yeah, I found him. I found the wrong fucking Joe.'
The kid giggled a little. 'There's lots of guys named Joe.'
'Thanks for the information, I'll keep it in mind.' I steered the car on to the street again, unsure of what to do next. Maybe just cruise around, stopping random junkies and asking them if they'd seen Joe, or look for the white Caddy or whatever it was. A white luxury car would stand out, especially if a pretty blonde woman were driving it.
The junkies were starting to come out in force now, appearing on the sidewalks and street corners A few of them waved at the car and then looked confused when they saw me at the wheel. It seemed to me there were more new faces among the familiar ones, people I didn't even know by sight. But that would figure, I thought; had I really expected the junkie population to go into some kind of stasis while I was away at college? Every junkie's got a friend and eventually the friend's got a habit. Like the jailbait in the back seat.
I glanced in the rear-view mirror at him. He was sitting up with his head thrown back, almost conscious. If I were going to find Joe or at least his lady friend, I'd have to dump the kid.
'Wake up' I said, making a right turn on to the street that would take me past Foster Circle and down to Streep's. 'I'm going to leave you off at the restaurant with everyone else. Can you handle that?'
