The Marijuana Chronicles (11 page)

“I’m reading a paper from the future,” he said, needing to hear the words. The black girl across from him was looking right at him, but she didn’t react. Her eyes were glazed, head bopping to earphones. He flipped through the newspaper again.

“America’s first black president is running for reelection.” The Twin Towers in flames. “Since 9/11, America has been fighting the war on terrorism.” American soldiers in Afghanistan. “Protests call for an end to ‘Stop and Frisk.’” Who’s Kim Kardashian? “Of the six hundred thousand New Yorkers stopped and frisked last year, only nine percent were white.” American soldiers in Iraq.
If You See Something, Say Something
. What kinda shit is this? “The latest move from the city that’s set trends by banning smoking in bars and trans fats in foods involves banning sugary drinks sold at restaurants, fast-food chains, theaters, delis, office cafeterias, and other places that fall under the New York City Board of Health’s regulation, by March 2013.”

Crash started to feel weird. He shut the paper, looking up at an ad that showed a Mexican family.
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. Oh shit. The train rocked and whined. People were giving him weird looks. Something was strangely oppressive. He got off the train at Union Square, went up the stairs to the main concourse, and spotted a group of people dressed all funky crazy. One was a colorful jester, a black kid with bells on his hat that jingled. There was a jockey, a princess, and there was this pretty blonde in an Alice in Wonderland dress that walked right up to him.

“Well, well. What kept you?” Her eyes were green, her blond hair raining down in loopy curls. She looked somehow familiar to him. He wondered if it was because she had a vague resemblance to Susan Sarandon.

“Are you … ?” Crash couldn’t even say.

“Of course,” she answered, laughing, turning, and pulling someone over. “And here’s the Doctor!”

A young guy in a doctor’s suit, white and clean. Obviously not the old Dr. Robert! He pressed his stethoscope to Crash’s chest, took a listen.

“Yes,” he said, “definitely alive.”

“I love your hair,” the Princess said, almost touching it.

“Hey, man,” the Jester said, his bells ringing, “you a real sight. “You lucky they din’t stop you, lookin’ like that.”

“What does that mean?”

“New York cops got the hots for people of color,” the Jester said.

“What the hell’s
people of color?”

“Thass you, dog.”

“Dog?” Crash frowned. “Hey, who the fuck are you people? Why are you dressed up like that?”

“We’re going to a party,” Alice said. She hooked her arm with his. “And we’re bringing you. It’s a costume thing, see? Jockey, Doctor, I’m the Alice, see? You’re ’70s Dude. And we even have a Jester and a Princess.”

Crash looked from one to the other.

“Are you people on something?”

They laughed, a drunken swimmy laugh, a rollicking happy vibe that irritated him.

“We kinda make you less conspicuous, don’t we?” Alice winked. “Come.”

They started walking, the Jester’s bells ringing, the Jockey twirling a walking stick, the Princess swinging her star on a wand. “Manhattan ain’t nothing anymore but a mall for NYU students,” Alice said. “The action’s in Brooklyn.”

L train. Sips from a canteen of rum and cola.

“Do you have a portal?” the Doctor asked. A young white guy, the boy next door.

“I don’t even know what that is,” Crash said.

Alice held a round mirrored disc in front of his face. It was the size of a coaster. Just a little round mirror.

“This is a portal,” Alice said. “Moon Dust? It’s made from this.” Alice was looking at Crash and just smiling, a weird spirit thing. Crash was feeling it. Like the almost-touch of acid. “Moon Dust is just one of many ways the Doctor has … invented … to introduce people to the resistance.”

“But why?”

“You see the way things are now. They’re going to get worse.”

“But there’s a black president!”

Their laughter drowned out the roar of the train pulling into Bedford. The station was crammed with young people. There were more white people there than he had ever seen in one place, except for maybe that Ten Years After concert he went to at Randall’s Island … that bevy of girl asses in skimpy shorts going up the stairs … On the street, a throbbing energy of lights, bars, cars, girls in tight pants and short skirts showing off long nylon legs … Crash was swimming a little from the rum maybe.

Bar after bar along the street, music blaring through open windows, and this one especially, blaring Hendrix.

“Now you’re talkin’,” he said.

Alice nodded to the others and they all went into the bar where Hendrix was singing about crosstown traffic. Alice bought Crash a beer. The Princess was dancing in a corner with the Doctor. The Jockey was poring over the pizza menu with the Jester.

Alice clinked beers with him, words coming in snippets and bits. Crash had too many questions. “I can’t answer all that.” But her eyes. The way she looked at him. Somehow, the promise of an eternal fuck. The music went from Hendrix to Cream, from Cream to the Rolling Stones. How was it Santana all of a sudden, doing “Samba Pa Ti”? The lilting congas and that crooning guitar. Pressing close, slow moving, and she was feeling fine against him. When the song ended, her hands slid up his shoulders and around his neck. Her swimmy eyes closed beautifully slow. She kissed him. It was a sloppy, sudden kiss, but not rushed. It had sincerity.

“I don’t even know your name,” he said.

“There are things I’m supposed to tell you this time.” She had both his hands. “My name isn’t one of them.”

“This time?”

“Yeah.” She was squeezing his hands. “The Doctor looks for people, special people. Like you, Jose.”

“Oh yeah? And what makes me so special?”

“You’re Puerto Rican,” she said.

“Look, man, I know how it feels to be picked on because I’m Puerto Rican, or picked OUT because I’m Puerto Rican, but this being
chosen
thing …”

“You don’t understand. You’re Puerto Rican,” she said, “from a time when there were Puerto Ricans.”

“What does that fucking mean, man? You tellin’ me there ain’t no Puerto Ricans where you come from?”

She held his hands, didn’t say anything. Her face glowed with something grown-up and painful.

“Hey, you’re scaring me …”

“I wish I could promise you a future, but I can’t.” Her eyes glistened wetly.

“But what happened to the Puerto Ricans?”

“Every person we bring in has a chance to change everything for the better. It might be your destiny. To change destiny.”

Crash was feeling a weird heat burning his face.

“Are you saying something bad is gonna happen to my people?”

“I’m not supposed to.” Why were her eyes wet? “You may fade soon, so …” Pretty eyes, quick blinking.

“What does that mean?”

She laughed, then spotted something over his shoulder.

“Fuck,” she said, “fuck fuck fuck! Adrian!” she yelled over the music to the Doctor.
“Arriverderci, Roma!”

“What’s going on?” Crash asked, turning to look.

She was gripping him frantic. “It’s the fuzz, jack!”

Crash glanced around, frantic. He wished the music would stop. The Jockey, the Princess, and the Doctor were nowhere in sight. When he turned again it seemed the Jester had vanished with a clink of bells.

Alice touched his face, her eyes determined and strange.

“I’ll find you again,” she said. A peck on the lips. Then she shoved him. He fell against an empty table, chair crashing to floor, people scurrying. He didn’t see where she went. Someone grabbed his arm as he was getting up.

“Well, well,” a voice said. “If it isn’t 1973.”

It was a tall thin man holding his arm, a man peculiarly dressed in a bowler hat and pinstripe suit.

“Who the fuck are you?” Crash shook his arm loose.

“They portal’d out,” explained another one, who was larger but dressed the same. Partners.

“Time cops?” Crash said it like he was spitting out soap. “Are you serious?”

“You should be grateful we’re
not
time cops,” Killy said, “because you don’t want to know what they do to accidental time trippers like you. No, you don’t.”

“Get your hands off me,” Crash snapped, giving Killy a shove that sent him reeling backward. Then he felt a burning heat strike him like a blow.

4.

FLASH … to wake up heavy with a dream he couldn’t remember, just bits of image and face … He woke up, rethinking it over and over as he sat in his bed … Crash felt like he couldn’t breathe. He opened the window, all the way up with a jarring noise that blurred the street below for a moment. It was Fox Street, looking east toward Prospect Avenue. It was rows of rows of grungy tenements, of people in the windows and kids on fire escapes and people on stoops. And the crack of a stickball bat and the rush and squeak of sneaks on asphalt. And that sound, it was in the air. Not just laughter and pots and pans … it was trombones it was timbales it was Puerto Rican salsa music. It was Héctor Lavoe singing and every Puerto Rican household saying, “Oh yes, come on in.” The sound was everywhere, in the walls and upstairs and out in the alley. Crash couldn’t say why his eyes filled with tears. Something here, and not forever.

Walking out into the living room, the usual picture. Mike was sprawled on the couch, sucking on a Honey Bear and watching the TV. Pachuco was playing the O’Jays on the stereo. Wage was sitting out on the fire escape doing his “post” routine. Crash went over to the corner, where there were some garbage bags on a table. He checked through them, the baggies of buds, packed product, ready to move.

“Hey,” Daniel said. He had just come out of the kitchen. “You sure were out for a long time.”

“Some kind of dream,” he said. “I can’t remember, but …”

Crash was trying to process all the bits of image and picture and face, sparks from a twitching live wire. The general commotion of the guys collecting their stuff and heading out, splitting up and meeting up, all prearranged and flawlessly perfected, little sidesteps to keep the man guessing. Crash fell into the routine and it was good, doing something calmed the jittery confusion in his head. And then there was a flow, and he hardly noticed time going by at all. They had cleared the bushes twice already and Crash had just sent Mike back to pick up some more product. No cops in sight so they were feeling pretty loose, just smoking cigarettes and talking with some dudes over by the benches, when this little white girl appeared out of nowhere. She was young, blond, a sort of hippie in flared, patched-up jeans. She didn’t seem uptight about being in the ghetto, and the guys were all lighting on her. Pachuco even cranked his portable cassette player to increase the vibe and maybe get her to dance, but slim hips only had eyes for Crash. The way she looked at him. Somehow, the promise of an eternal fuck. The music went from Hendrix to Cream, from Cream to the Rolling Stones, as Pachuco searched the tape for the proper soundtrack for the white girl. How was it Santana all of a sudden, doing “Samba Pa Ti”? The lilting congas and that crooning guitar. Her tongue twirling redly around that Charms Blow Pop.

“I have an offer to make you,” she said, opening her purse. A beaded thing. Crash peeked inside. Saw the weed all glittery sparkling.

Now Crash was open to this …

D
EAN
H
ASPIEL
is an Emmy Award winner and Eisner Award nominee. He created
BILLY DOGMA
, illustrated for HBO’s
Bored to Death
, received a residency at Yaddo, and was a master artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Haspiel has written and drawn many superhero and semi-autobiographical comix, including collaborations with Harvey Pekar, Jonathan Ames, Inverna Lockpez, and Jonathan Lethem. He also curates and creates for TripCity.net.