Setup on Front Street (4 page)

THE
Fun House was up at the artsy-fartsy end of Duval with all the art galleries
and whatnot, away from all the bars and the tourists. Kind of hidden down this
little alley behind a vacant storefront. No sign on the door, of course.

The walk downtown took me twenty hard
minutes. My brain raced in fourth gear all the way, trying to figure out how I
wanted to handle this whole thing. I played out various scenarios in my mind,
but they all ended in flames. It was just that I never had to deal with
anything like this before, you know?

Shit, this was
Norma
, for Chrissake.
Norma!

By the time I stepped through the flimsy
Fun House door, I still didn't know what I would say to her.

The girl at the desk wore too much
makeup.
 
Her lipstick made a shapeless
red blob on her pinched face. It all stuck out beneath a badly-teased haystack
of hair. That's not to say that more careful attention would've improved her
appearance.

She waved her hands around as she spoke. Chipped
blue nail polish distracted my attention while she ran through all the prelims,
telling me I was only paying for a massage in private, nothing illegal was
happening, was I a cop, and on and on.

When she asked me if there was a particular
girl I wanted, I said Norma.

"Norma? I don't think we have a Norma
here."

"She's
here. That's who I want."

"Well, there's nobody here by that
name, but let's see."

She turned toward the back room, calling
out the available girls. Three of them stepped lazily through the cheap gold
curtain.

There she was.

She gasped as she saw me. I made a soft
gesture toward her. The other two disappeared back where they came from.

The girl at the desk said, "Oh, you
want Candy." I nodded as she asked, "Will that be cash or
charge?"

I peeled off a bill without taking my eyes
off Norma. Finally, we went to a small room off the hallway in the back. She
closed the door behind us.

The bed took up most of the room. We just
stood there for a moment looking at each other, comparing recall to reality.

It wasn't easy, because the only light in
the room came from a small low-wattage lamp on the bedside table. It cast a
distorting yellowish glare over the immediate area, fading to dimness. The
window AC strained to cool things down, but all it really did was make a lot of
noise. A slight odor of mildew hung over everything.

Her eyes, once a lively and crisp blue,
were now washed out, nearly colorless, encircled by thick mascara and dark
brows. Her face was never what you would call beautiful — her nose and
mouth were way too small, if you know what I mean — so she didn't hit
most people as sexy. A lot of hard times showed on that face right now, and her
shoulders sagged under the strain.

I noticed her hair. It still held the
beautiful light brown of my memory, but it was messy and looked like shit. Her
mouth, so often lit by what I thought to be a pretty smile, now drooped
downward at the corners, carved with permanent creases. I'd seen the same
defeated look on hundreds of faces in the pen.

I hated to admit this, but her figure was
starting to slip, too. I mean, I know she was about thirty-eight, so you have
to expect some concessions here and there. You can't stay young and fresh
forever. But this didn't look like any battle with Father Time. It looked more
like she'd neglected herself for a while now.

I took her pale, petite hand in both of mine.

"What happened?" I barely got it
out.

She looked away.

With her hand still in mine, I reached up
under her chin, gently tilting her head back toward me. My eyes repeated the
question.

Again she turned her head. I gave her a lot
of time, so she took it.

Finally, she said, "I needed the
money."

"Needed the money? What for? What
happened to your job?"

Her eyes were now on the floor, while her
voice dripped sarcasm. "My job? Which one?"

"Well, back when you were working at
the Raw Bar."

"Ha! Sure! The Raw Bar. Slinging beer
and oysters. Good for two or three hundred a week."

"So — so what happened? I mean,
it was good enough back then. What the hell happened?"

"I didn't want to go on working there
my whole life. That's what happened."

She looked back up at me, right through my
eyes and straight into my head, where she'd always, always been.

"I wanted … I wanted to make money. To
have the things I never had. I didn't want to have to scrounge for the rest of
my life."

"And
you don't think you could get those things working a respectable job?"

"Respectable job? Look who's talking.
When was the last time
you
drew an honest day's pay?"

"Okay, okay, but you know what I mean.
Did you have to...to do
this
just so you could buy yourself things? I
mean, couldn't you have taken a second job or … or something?"

Her eyes
turned downward again.

"I
needed more. A lot more."

I stiffened at those code words. Now I was
sure, absolutely sure, that somewhere in there was white powder and a straw, or
maybe a needle.

"Tell me, honey. Please tell me."
I steeled myself.

"I can't. I just can't!" Tears
found their way onto her face.

I sat us both down on the bed.

"Yes, you can."

I softly
stroked her cheek, then dabbed at her tears with a tissue from
the table, not wanting to smear her caked-on makeup.

"Now,
go ahead."

"Oh, Don Roy, I can't! You'll never
forgive me. You probably still hate me for the way I left you, and I just
know
you'll never forgive me for … for all this."

She swept the squalid little room with an
arm gesture. I saw more tears dribbling out.

More tissue, more dabbing.

"Listen, honey, I don't hate you and I
never will. Now, just take it nice and slow. Start from the beginning."

She sobbed out loud, burying her head in my
chest.

I could tell she was ashamed of where she
went with her life. Both my arms wrapped around her. I didn't even think about
it, I just did it.

At last, I held her again, her familiar
shape and form contoured to mine, even in that awkward position there on that
squeaky bed. The first time in nearly seven years, but for just a second there,
it felt like all that time never passed, or somehow melted away.

Even though she was crying, I felt joy just
having her so close. No matter what happened after tonight, I knew that this
moment would be a snapshot I would carry with me my whole life.

I prompted her again to tell me. She got it
together and started to speak.

"I started doing this …" She
sniffled and swallowed. "I started doing this to...to...get money for
BK."

I heard
the words but wanted to think I didn't. I wanted to think the rumbling AC
drowned them out.

"
What?"

"It was all to get money for BK."

My arms released her from my tender
embrace.

My big hands shook her shoulders instead.

"What in the
fuck
are you
talking about?"

Her voice was still full of tears.
"See? I
told
you you
wouldn't forgive me. I … I …"

Right then, I didn't know what to do,
whether to be pissed off or gently understanding. Actually, I was both, but I
just didn't know how to show it.

I shook her shoulders again, and I tried to
say "What?", but my voice wasn't working.

"He … he … needed a lot of money to … to
pay off his gambling debts. He owed, like, thousands."

"What the — what —"

None of this was computing. The truth was,
I didn't want it to.

You know, when you hear shit like this, you
don't want it to go any farther. You really wish it could somehow back itself
up into its stinking black hole as though you'd never heard it in the first
place.

But of course, once it's out, it's like the
genie. There's no stuffing it back inside.

"You'd been gone from here for a few
years already. I think it was right after you got sent up. He and I were
already seeing each other, you know. Then he got way behind in his gambling
debts, you know, betting on games and stuff. Some of Mambo's men threatened to
hurt him bad. Oh, Don Roy, I was there that night. It was terrible! They —
the things they said they'd do —"

"Wait a second! BK's been gambling
since we were in high school. He's always paid his debts. He never needed
money! Shit, the Whitneys are one of the richest families in town! Why, when
the old man was mayor, he stole more fucking money than they could print! What
— why —"

She sniffled a couple of times. "Well,
one day the old man turned the faucet off. I guess he got tired of making good
on BK's debts. Said if he needed to pay Mambo off he was gonna have to get the
money from somewhere else. He thought it would get BK to stop gambling."

"So …"

"He
didn't make me, no, if that's what you're thinking. But he did suggest it. Like
it was the only way to come up with cash real quick. I mean, he was only a city
commissioner then, and you know, they don't get paid shit. And he owed Mambo
about nine thousand dollars. Mambo'd been carrying him for a few weeks."

"He
suggested
that you … you do
this?"

"He was desperate! They were gonna
break his legs, or maybe kill him! You know Mambo. He doesn't screw
around!"

"But he told you to sell yourself? So
you could pay off
his debts
?"

The room almost started to spin. I really
couldn't take this.

"He didn't tell me to. I agreed to do
it. I cared about him, you know? And it was only gonna be for a little while,
until he could get straight with Mambo."

She reached for another couple of tissues,
then wiped her nose. Outside I heard distant thunder. It surprised me. We were
still a couple of months from rainy season.

"Besides, he said he loved me. Said he
was gonna leave Rita."

"Leave Rita?" I had to laugh.
"You know how long they've been married? He'd never leave her."

Not that he'd never leave her, mind you,
only that he'd never leave her for Norma, but I didn't want to say that.

You see,
Norma didn't realize that people like BK and Rita lived way up there, operating
in their own little gold-plated world with others just like them, drinking
champagne and shit, doing whatever the hell they wanted. All the while, people
like her and me scrounged around down here, close to the zero, fighting for
their scraps while taking their shit our whole lives.

"Well,
he said he was going to leave her. For me. And he said he was gonna do it right
after he won the mayor's election. If I could only help him out of his
jam."

"And you fucking
did
it? You
started selling your ass for that motherfucker? To pay off his markers?"

No matter how hard I tried, and I
was
trying,
I just couldn't bring myself to believe this.

"I told you, it was only supposed to
be temporary. And after about two months, I'd given him the nine thousand plus
about another four in interest."

I groaned.

"Don't tell me. After he squared
himself with Mambo, he kept on betting and losing."

"Right, and he —"

"Sure! Because he had you to cover his
goddam losses. And you kept on fucking God knows how many guys a night just to
keep him in action!"

My gut churned with rage. It really hurt. I
was close to puking it all up in one big industrial-strength retch.

Her eyes burst with shame as her head
plowed into my
chest
again, sobbing loudly.

"Yes.
Yes. That's right!" Tears continued streaming down her cheeks. "And
then he threatened to break it off."

"Why?"

It thundered again, this time a little
louder.

"After he was elected in, I think,
eighty-nine, then he said he wanted to wait till this year, when he would get
re
-elected.
He said after that, he'd be unbeatable for all time, and then he could leave
Rita with no problem."

She crumpled up the tissue and glanced
around for a wastebasket. I took it from her soft hand and tossed it on the
floor.

She continued. "But then about a year
ago, she found out about us. She warned him she was gonna go public with it.
And that would've ruined his re-election chances. He wants to be mayor so bad, you
know, to serve the people …"