Baker ran upstairs past me and Wendy and I heard her rummaging through the bathroom like police looking for weed, smashing bottles and knocking them onto the floor. She comes back out and says:
“Matt. Come get your bag.”
I stand and follow her into the bedroom.
“Get your bag. Let’s go.”
“Isn’t this your house too?”
“I’ll explain it in the car.”
We stand faced-off over the bed. That’s the bed we were supposed to fuck on. This was the moment we were supposed to do the deed. I see Baker has cleaned the sheets and picked out a faux-down comforter. Wendy is unknown to me. Brooklyn and Little Baby Faulkner are unknown to me. Baker’s grammy is even unknown to me. Somehow in all our fuck-nighting I only ever met her parents and sister. The whole house is unknown to me and I’m playing psychological catch up.
“I gotta call Nik,” I say.
“Matthew. I know you gotta call Nik. What I need you to do is bring your phone with you. And your phone charger—got it. Grab your bag and let’s go.
Baker and I shuffle down the stairs—quick, quick—I’m out the back door savoring the delicious evil of my eye contact with Brooklyn, savoring her mixed look of fuck me and fuck me, her standing in front of a screen door holding her baby and behind the screen, two dobermans jumping to the top of the door scraping and slobbering all over it—I guess this be Chuck and Seymour.
The instant Baker and I step out the back door, Brooklyn un-hitches the front door and these two dobermans flow through the house like water. Covering every surface with licks and smells and bites. Rushing into the back door, unable to subdue it, and Baker has the key in the ignition and the Rabbit is pulling backward through the neighbor’s yard flattening grass and going bump, bump over some other car’s muffler, then pulling forth—like thunder!—now we’re the ones who win! Now we are the ones who win. We are the champions over ice and dogs and coke and blow and we are the ones whose mobility is piloted by my old friend Baker, my carnal buddy who would always offer it up to me since that first time we ever did it.
“You alright?” she says
We’re on the freeway.
“I’m alright now!”
“Kinda gives your head a rush,” she says.
“I know!”
She says: “It’s like we’re already doing blow!”
“I know, Baker. It’s amazing. Are you and Brooklyn even friends?”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. She’ll come around.”
“Ok but it doesn’t seem like she’s about to come around.”
Baker laughs. “No, she is, she is. Or maybe she’s not. Listen. Matthew. Here’s the plan. We’ll go get you an eight ball. You go to dinner with Nik. When you’re done you call me, we’ll go to my aunt’s house and Manny. We can stay there tonight and I’ll call Brooklyn tonight or tomorrow and we’ll try to get back into my house.”
“Can’t we just go there tonight?”
“It’s not good to get Brooklyn mad. And plus with her boyfriend Rambuncto coming tomorrow..Rambuncto is not a guy you want to bump into.”
“But you fucked him.”
“Well, yes, but when a girl spreads her legs, even a guy like Rambuncto has a calm side.”
“A loving side?”
“Let’s say calm. Calmer. I would hate it if we all had to live up to the standard of having a loving side. Maybe you know many people in LA with a loving side? Some cute costume girls you take home and warm between your sheets?”
“The costume girls I’ve met are quick to bed and even quicker to leave. I can’t say I’ve met too many people with a heart on the left coast, either.”
I push off my shoes and take off my socks and stick my feet out the window.
“Is that not ok where we’re going?”
“To buy an eight ball?” Baker says.
“Yeah,” I say. “Are they serious people?”
“They are pretty serious,” she says. “I mean I would keep my feet inside the car. In fact it’s better if when we get there you give me the money and you stay in the car. New people, dig?”
“I dig. I prefer it that way, too. You know. Don’t want to see too much. Don’t want to know too much. Whose house is that back there?”
“Fuck,” Baker says. “It’s me and Brooky’s! She just gettin’ all territorial with her beaux coming in.”
“Is he going to live there?”
“Hell no. He’s going home when he gets out.”
“Where is home?”
“At his parents’ house!”
“Oh,” I say. “So whose house is the one back there?”
“Let me see. I signed the lease with Grammy as my credit check but Brooklyn put up all of the deposit.”
“To me if it’s your name on the lease it’s your house.”
But Baker stops me: “Normally that would be the way but this isn’t some Hollywood address. It ain’t no Oakwood one, neither. This is East Dayton and in East Dayton I hate to say it but different rules apply. Have you ever opened an East Dayton door?”
“Sure,” I say. But I stop there as the rest of my answer involves another girl.
“Is it like every other door you ever opened?”
“No, you know—they’re all tight. They all require two hands.”
“Esactly,” Baker says. “Exactamundo. Persactamondaniferous. This our stop, up here.”
“What do I do?”
“Give me your money. Wait. Do not start trouble with these guys.”
“Who am I? I don’t start trouble.”
“Whatever. Just don’t start trouble with those guys.”
I give her a Jim Carrey wink and a thumbs up and I look around to see what I can see. The first few minutes go alright with me seeing that we’re in a boulevard with large grassy areas in between the road that goes in and the road that goes out. There are no children playing, though. Just guys with wife beaters, tongues hanging out their head. These are all whites, no other colors here. If Baker and I were black, we’d be on the west side of Dayton and our powdered coke would be crack and we wouldn’t have driven up in a car. We’d have come on foot and our binge would take place on the floor of someone’s house.
Here, being black would get you shot.
Here, you look at a person the wrong way, you’d wake up in the hospital, cast on your arm, missing an eye, with Baker pulling a chair next to you, asking if you want a bump.
These guys, lounging on porches yelling at they bitches and slapping they kids in the backs of they heads with force that could give a concussion.
You figure everyone’s high (at least on weed)—at worst on crack and heroin. I pictured the room Baker was in right now and it had her guy, sitting on a couch with scales and piles and straws and spoons. As soon as Baker walked in the door everyone else left for other parts of the house: his baby momma #1 with some titties hanging out, his guard left to come outside to watch me. And here’s this motherfucker now, coming to sit on the steps in front of the building. He knows who I am from the very beginning and he lets me know he knows.
I want to pick up my phone and call Nik. But I don’t want to be on the phone, making a call in front of these people. I think of texting him, but what would that look like? An out-of-town guy (that he’s never met) sitting in front of a drug deal texting the cops!? That’ll never happen. I nod in the guy’s direction and look out my own window, sight lines never set to stare, always casually looking toward the sky or the grass in as little-threatening way as possible.
I think of jails, of every cell I’ve ever seen on TV. I am afraid. Of incarceration. Of my clean white ass being raped by monsters, by former people who no longer respect any human rights. Of a system of laws and wardens, those so happy to put anyone in jail—even those innocent of a crime. I fear being wrongfully convicted, even though I’m white, of having 10 or 20 years of my life stolen from me and for what? To write books in a jail cell? To be prevented from writing? To have my writing stolen? I fear being stuck in jail having no way to get my pills. Pills prescribed to me by a psychiatrist who loved me in a certain way, who knew that without this one or that one my chances of suicide would go way up. I fear being executed. I thrill the mechanics of a lethal injection, of being killed by jail mates for being smart, of being stabbed in my eyes.
I look at the door again, to the apartment that Baker is in. The guy turns and makes eye contact. Then he stands and goes back inside.
Now Baker is going to get asked about her friend outside. Is he cool? Is he ok? He’s getting kinda shifty. He’s impatient. About to drive away. Are you sure this guy’s ok, Bakers? Can he be trusted? This guy, Baker, his mouth invites my fist, invites a board to slap his head and jiggle his brain matter. And what is it?—Just a can of superior attitude, malt liquor, cranberry jelly? Is this what you’ve brought us, Charisma? C Bakers? I wanna hold his head through the window and slap his mouth with my dick. To slap his pretty boy mouth with my East Dayton dick.