The Life of Lol (7 page)

“Well ya coulda just shouted, dumbass”, he grumbled.

“yeah, an I could just go in and back to my nice warm bed” she replied curtly.

The two friends crept inside through the side door that Lol had opened and sneaked up the two flights of dinghy stairs to the room they were letting Lol sleep in.  Years later, she would remember this as one of the happiest times of her life, the night she slept with Groucho.  It was nothing sinister or nasty, like you hear in the news nowadays.  They didn’t even take their clothes off.  He curled up on the bed, grateful for something warm for a change, then she climbed in beside him and he put his arms round her and they went quietly to sleep.  He must’ve been happy, Lol figures after, cos he was mumbling about his Tinkerbell in his sleep.  Lol figured that he must’ve thought she was his own lost daughter the way he held onto Lol all night.

“Tinkerbell”, he murmured, “you’re not lost.  The sea didn’t take you.  My Tinkerbell.”

“Shuddup Groucho” Lol grumbled.

“I got you back, Tinkerbell”, he mumbled again and held onto her tighter.

Lol went to sleep happy that night.  Whatever happened in the future, tonight was all right.

Release looms

Six years.  I’d been in prison six long years.  I wondered where the thoughts of Groucho had suddenly come from, and I shivered at the memory that was tinged with bitterness and sorrow.  The thoughts of that prisoner Marybeth were still sore in my mind, even though that incident had been a good while ago now.  Maybe the memory of old Groucho soothed me in a way, I dunno.  What would he have thought of the woman I’d become? 

Marybeth.  The name still haunted me even now, six years into my sentence.  Not too much had changed since I’d toppled Diane as number one around here.  I had the confidence now to wear my hair as I damn well pleased.  It was shiny, long again and gorgeous.  Nobody even dared look at me.  I was the only supplier of drugs in here, and yeah, I was making plenty.  But there was still Marybeth.  That had happened a while ago.  I had sent Big D to talk to her, and tell her the score, and she just beat the shit of the huge dyke who had fast become my friend and protector.  Marybeth wasn’t huge, but she was athletic.  She’d won medals for some athletic competition or other, I didn’t know what, I hadn’t listened to any of the rumours.  She had a completely shaven head, which suited her ebony skin quite well.  Didn’t seem to have any interest in me for the few days she was on our wing.  Why take the risk, I’d thought at the time.  I was more comfortable here than I’d ever been.  I wasn’t about to lose it again.  And so I sacrificed a part of my humanity to survive on the top of the pile for a little longer.  With Big D saying she’d failed me and feeling wretched, I bribed one of the workshop girls with my entire stock of phone cards to make a shiv for me.  This had better not go wrong.  If it did I’d face twenty years.
And as the earth is heaped on top

With a mighty sigh she dies.                     ***

Six years.  I’d been in prison six long years.  I wondered where the thoughts of Groucho had suddenly come from, and I shivered at the memory that was tinged with bitterness and sorrow.  The thoughts of that prisoner Marybeth were still sore in my mind, even though that incident had been a good while ago now.  Maybe the memory of old Groucho soothed me in a way, I dunno.  What would he have thought of the woman I’d become? 

Marybeth.  The name still haunted me even now, six years into my sentence.  Not too much had changed since I’d toppled Diane as number one around here. I had the confidence now to wear my hair as I damn well pleased.  It was shiny, long again and gorgeous.  Nobody even dared look at me.  I was the only supplier of drugs in here, and yeah, I was making plenty.  But there was still Marybeth.  That had happened a while ago.  I had sent Big D to talk to her, and tell her the score, and she just beat the shit of the huge dyke who had fast become my friend and protector.  Marybeth wasn’t huge, but she was athletic.  She’d won medals for some athletic competition or other, I didn’t know what, I hadn’t listened to any of the rumours.  She had a completely shaven head, which suited her ebony skin quite well.  Didn’t seem to have any interest in me for the few days she was on our wing.  Why take the risk, I’d thought at the time.  I was more comfortable here than I’d ever been.  I wasn’t about to lose it again.  And so I sacrificed a part of my humanity to survive on the top of the pile for a little longer.  With Big D saying she’d failed me and feeling wretched, I bribed one of the workshop girls with my entire stock of phone cards to make a shiv for me.  This had better not go wrong.  If it did I’d face twenty years.

It didn’t go wrong.  It happened in the bathroom.  Marybeth was careful, she watched for Alicia or any of my other goons following her in.  But today they didn’t.  As she stripped and went into the shower room, I was already there.  Naked like her.  With one hand behind my back,

“Something to say, alley cat?” she said smiling, full of confidence.

“I just wanted to…” I started.

But as I began to speak, I slashed her across the throat with the shiv that had been in my palm.  She went down, and only thinking only of my own self-preservation, I finished the job.  She looked at me as she died.  Tears.  I’ll always remember the tears as I murdered her in cold blood.  And my only thought.  Top of the pile for life.  Nobody would ever challenge me now.  I was young then, and flushed with the thoughts of my own abilities and strengths. Despite what Groucho had taught me, I was a full-fledged bad bitch now.  As I looked at the woman bleed to death on the floor by my hand, the feeling of strength brought about my own evil would take years to shake off.  I felt a little bit more of young Lol die as I ran from the bathroom.

Marybeth’s murderer was never found, but everyone secretly knew it was me.  And they were afraid of me now.  Respect brought about by fear.  I was worse, and more powerful than Diane had ever been.

But now, six years into my sentence I had a visitor.  His name was Allen Rigby.  A face from my past.

                          ***

Chapter 10. A cold new Morning

The blonde girl was fourteen now, still thin and under nourished, but the green eyes now shone, and she had attractive features and a smile like a tiger that was about to kill its prey. For all appearances, she was one of the homeless, and hung around still with Groucho and Dreamer.  Horace Horseshit had gone away when Dreary had died the year before. They’d found her lifeless in the alley one morning still clutching her bottle of hooch.  Dreamer wasn’t himself now either, he’d switched up from PCP and crystal meth to Smack, and the cons and tricks they pulled to keep Dreamer happy had to be much more elaborate these days.  Groucho was scared for his friend, and thought of ways to wean his old comrade off the hard stuff, all to no avail.  Sometimes he thought of just bagging up his belongings and walking off into the street, leaving Dreamer and the girl to it, but the young blonde kid brought the three of them together.  Lol had never left his side since they met, apart from to go home to sleep. She was a full on homeless now most of the time like the rest of them, and never regretted it.  They had plenty fun.

And he taught her a lot.  Like the time she’d wanted to rifle through Dreary’s things,

“We ain’t animals” he’d said, “Animals turn on each other.  They don’t see what they truly are.  Turn into one and it’s hard to get back”

And so they simply covered Dreary’s face and left her.

And then one morning it happened.  She’d
wandered back to Halligan’s alley early the following day, bearing some stolen fruit and some cereal bars from the home. 

That’s when the life of Lol ended.  She always thought of this as the turning point in her existence, and would come back to it more than once, and always with a tear in her eye.  This was the moment that ripped her heart from her chest and strangled her very breath in her lungs.  No matter how jaded and cynical she would become later in her life, this was the one moment that could make her weep.

She found Dreamer in the alley, sobbing his heart out, laying down in the dirt.  At first, suspecting he was high, she admonished him and looked for Groucho.  He was always brightest in the mornings, and had energy.  The old guy looked forward to seeing what food she had brought him.  But this morning Groucho wasn’t around.  With the icy fingers of fear suddenly clutching her heart, she crouched in the dirt with Dreamer to try to make him make sense.  He was strung out, more so than usual, and probably hadn’t used for a while.  It didn’t sink in at first, but eventually, Dreamer’s sobbed words reached her brain,

“Groucho dead”

“Groucho dead”

“Groucho dead”

Dead.  Dreamer had woken in the night, and shook his friend to get some of the packet of what Groucho called Pixie dust from him.  It was for emergencies.  Dreamer hadn’t been able to wake his friend.  And so he shouted and screamed in the street, until a late night cab office clerk had come running over, and dialed 911. 

Groucho was dead.

              ***

She learned afterwards that he died peacefully in his sleep.  That he should have been taking diabetes medication, but for years, he’d suspected the government of dosing him, so he hadn’t taken it.  And so it was just Lol and Dreamer now.  For a while they hung out together, but Dreamer was hard work without the snarkiness and bitter humour of Groucho to make her smile.  She missed her friend terribly.  Dreamer was constantly strung out and looking for the next fix.  She saw him less and less, until one day she saw him never again.  The last time anybody heard from him was when police found the body of an African American male in an abandoned apartment, dead of a heroin overdose.  He’d become so desperate to find veins to inject the stuff he’d taken to injecting it between his toes.  By all account he was in a pretty bad way.  But by that time Lol would be far away.

The girl became a loner after that.  She spent her days making money, in the way Groucho had taught her.  The cigarettes scheme bored her now, plus she was too old to go hanging round a kindergarten playground.  So, clad in her trusty red hoody, skinny worn jeans and favourite green sneakers, she left for town.

It was easy.  Lol waited in line for the automated cash teller outside the subway station.  She watched as the guy entered his card pin code.  She held her ten dollar note in her hand 

4819

As the money came rattling out the slot and he went to pick it up, she jostled him.  He was startled, and at first thought he was being robbed. 

“Hey”, he shouted, “what you doing?”

“Sorry”, she answered, “you dropped a ten dollar bill.  Just saw it going on the floor”

He smiled at her then,

“Wow, thanks”, he said watching her sparking green eyes.  He was in his thirties, and she was just sixteen and becoming gorgeous.  For a moment he imagined taking her a hotel and banging the ass out of her.  Blonde too, his favourite.  He picked up the ten dollars, and smiled at her,

“That’s really honest”, he said, “That’s part of our rent money for the week.  Couldn’t lose that.  Guess there’s still some honest people left in the world huh?”

She smiled again, and they separated.  She walked away fast, putting up her hood before he realised that she’d pocketed his card in the exchange.  Running around the block to the Macy’s bank teller, she entered the number

4819

Withdrew $500.  Easy money.  Then she took the subway to the west side of the city and the business district.  Easy pickings there too.  She could clear $5000 a day sometimes.  Keep the hoodie up, so nobody would see the face.  Easy pickings.  She squirreled the money away, not in a bank as there were always bad guys robbing banks and doing heists.  No, she’d found a better place at the back of the old bus depot that she’d been fascinated by as a kid.  Through the lines of the old rotting hulks of withdrawn and scrap buses, there was a tiny shed that had the front door boarded.  Lol knew how to undo the board and there, under the floor in a chest covered with dirt and floorboards, was her money and precious things.  Nobody had touched the shed for years apart from her.  If you didn’t know the chest with the money was there, you’d have never found it. And it proved a good idea too.

One night the cops came to call at the home.  A girl about Lol’s age had been traced back here committing theft and fraud.  A girl in a red hooded top and green sneakers.  Course, when the cops came, the hooded top had been left in the old shed, and Lol had on her feet only white socks, the home rules states Lol’s sneakers be left in the cupboard.

Tanner, the home manager, feared what would happen if the girl was arrested from a home he was in charge of, and so he confirmed that girl didn’t wear the green sneakers that were at this moment locked in the cupboard out of Lol’s reach.  After the cops left, the two said nothing to one another, Tanner looking forward to the day when she turned eighteen and would leave the home.  Nevertheless, one morning soon after when he arrived, he found a parcel waiting on the table addressed to him.  It contained $500, and although there was no form of identification on the parcel, he knew where it had come from.  And so he never bothered Lol again.