Whitey boosted the biggest cigar in the box, slipping it up his sleeve in the familiar motion of a man patting his hair in place.
The clerk appeared. “Anything else?” he said.
“Matches,” said Whitey.
“Matches are free.”
Whitey took two packs. “Thanks a bunch.”
He walked another block toward the neon intersection, stopped, cracked open a Pepsi, tilted it up to his mouth. Christ, it was good, even better than he remembered. He swallowed half of it, then lit the cigar, filling his mouth with a thick ball of hot, wonderful smoke, slowly letting it out, curling through his lips. He was alive. Standing outside an electronics store-a banner on the window read: ARE YOU READY FOR HIGH DEFINATION? — Whitey sipped his Pepsi and puffed his cigar. A gorgeous weatherwoman on a big-screen TV was pointing at flashing thunderclaps on a map of some European country, France, maybe, or Germany. European weather: this was the big time. Whitey watched transfixed until he happened to notice the price sticker on the TV. And that was the sale price. He walked away.
Cigar in his mouth, the remaining five cans of Pepsi dangling from the empty plastic ring, Whitey reached the intersection. Liquor stores, yes. Bars, yes. Women, no. He went into Angie’s Alligator Lounge and sat at the empty bar.
“What can I get you?” said the bartender.
Alcohol was out: halfway house rules. “What’ve you got?” said Whitey.
“What have I got?”
“Beer,” said Whitey, first word that came to mind. “Narragansett.” That had been his beer.
“Narragansett?”
“Bud, then.”
The bartender served him a Bud. “Buck and a half.”
Whitey gave him two bills, waved away the change, just waved it away with his cigar, very cool.
“I’ll level with you,” Whitey said. He waited for the bartender to say something or change the expression on his face. When none of that happened, he continued, “The truth is I been away for a while.”
The bartender nodded. “Narragansett is kind of a collector’s item.”
“And a little company would be nice, you know? Someone to talk to,” he added, but the bartender had already picked up the phone. He spoke into it quietly for a few moments, not looking at Whitey once, hung up. Less than a minute later, a woman walked through the front door, sat down beside Whitey; the bartender found something to do among the bottles. Whitey laughed, more like a giggle that he modulated at the end.
“What’s funny?” said the woman.
Whitey took a hit off the cigar. “Inside you get shit,” he said. “Out in the world all you got to do is ask.” He turned to her. She was stunning. He could smell her. That was stunning, too. What sounds would she make, coming and coming? His mouth dried up.
She was watching him, squinting just a little, possibly from the cigar smoke, or maybe she’d forgotten her glasses. “You’re the one wanted a date, right?”
Whitey swallowed. “A date,” he said, liking the sound of that. “Yeah.”
“You wanna finish your beer first?”
“Beer’s a no-no.”
She rose. He went with her to the back of the lounge and out a back door. “We’re leaving?” Whitey said.
“Know what a liquor license costs?”
She led him into an alley, around a corner, and into a hotel. The sign said HOTEL, but there was no lobby, just a beefy guy behind bulletproof glass, his head on a desk. The woman went by it, up a flight of stairs-oh, following her ass up the stairs, that was something-into a room with a bed and a sink in it and nothing else.
“Mind washing off?” said the woman, nodding to the sink. “Can’t be too careful these days.” She was still stunning, despite the harsh strip lighting in the room. Her pimples or whatever they were didn’t bother him at all, and he was used to that kind of lighting.
Whitey washed off. When he turned to her, she was sitting on the bed, yawning. “ ’Scuse me,” she said. “Okay. Suck is twenty-five, fuck is forty, suck and fuck fifty.”
Whitey didn’t know what to say, couldn’t have spoken anyway, his mouth being so dry. He tried some calculations. Suck and fuck was clearly a deal, but fuck alone was what he wanted-to be deep inside her, to make her make those Melanie Griffith sounds-and all he had was thirty dollars, minus what he’d paid for the beer and the Pepsi. Christ! He couldn’t even afford suck.
“But since you look like a nice guy,” she said, breaking the silence, “I could maybe do you a little discount.”
Whitey tried to say something, could not, put all his money, even the change, on the bed. She stared at it. He leaned over her, smoothed out the crumpled bills.
“Oh, hell,” she said, scooping it all into her sparkle-covered purse, “let’s not… what’s the word? Starts with D.”
Whitey didn’t know. He just knew that he was going to get laid after all. The knowledge turned on a kind of buzzing inside him, a buzzing he hadn’t heard for a long time, not since-but best not to think about that. He put his arms around the woman and pulled her close, knocking her head awkwardly against his belt buckle.
“Easy,” she said. “Take your pants off.”
But Whitey didn’t have time for that; he made do with just pulling them down below his knees. Meanwhile the woman lay back on the bed, hiked up her skirt, pulled off her panties, and he saw that other sex, the lips and hair, all real, right there, as the buzzing grew louder. She stuffed the panties down the side of her boot. Whitey fell on her, shoved himself inside.
Not quite inside, perhaps against her thigh. She reached down between them, took his penis in her hand-“Dicker,” she said, “that’s the word I was looking for”-and guided him in.
“Oh, God,” Whitey said, “oh my God.” He thrust himself in and out, almost drowning in the buzz, about to come any second, when suddenly he remembered Melanie Griffith. Slow down, big guy, slow down, he told himself. He had to hear those female sounds. He slid his hand down her stomach, into the wetness, found her clit, or something, and started thrumming it back and forth, fast as he could.
“Knock it off,” said the woman.
Whitey froze. His hard-on went droopy inside her, just like that. The buzzing stopped. In the silence he heard some little animal behind the wall. The woman made a hitching motion with her hips.
“You stupid bitch,” Whitey said.
“Huh?”
Everything was going sour, like the last time. Where were the smart women? His needs were simple and this one was supposed to be a professional, for God’s sake. It made Whitey so angry, he hit her, not hard, only the back of his hand against her pimply face.
Whitey realized almost right away that he had to make it up to her. “Okay, so we both made mistakes,” he said. “Don’t mean we can’t-” But she writhed around under him and jabbed at a button on the wall that he hadn’t noticed. “What’s that about?” said Whitey. “Look, we were getting along pretty good there for a while. No reason we-”
The door burst open. All fucked up, like the last time, but things that hadn’t happened before were happening now, like this beefy guy coming in with the baseball bat. But the panic inside Whitey was the same: a screaming gusher from deep in his chest, boiling up and spraying red in his brain. It took away visual continuity, leaving Whitey with a few strobe-lit impressions: the beefy guy going down, the bat now in his own hands, blood here and there, are you ready for high definition? And then he was out the door and in the street.
Whitey returned to the halfway house at 6:05, signed the clipboard. “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “Got off at the wrong stop.”
“Everyone does, first day,” said the social worker. “But don’t make it a habit.”
“I brought you a Pepsi.”
“That was thoughtful of you, Whitey. I’ve been going through your file. Seems you were quite the stickman up north.”
Silence. “Stickman?”
