When Tommie drops me off it's pouring out; so I guess I was right about the rain. After I somehow find it in my heart to kiss him goodbye, I wait under the awning until he's all the way out of sight I so can light a cigarette and go upstairs. See, Sean and I are roommates and we live in this place called Wave Crest Apartments right behind Star Pizza in the ART DISTRICT. It's dirty and smelly and you have to watch your back, but man, it's home. I could never live in the suburbs. So, I go up, thinking Sean might be home now since she's been gone all day. It looks like wet footprints going both ways on the steps. About a third of the way up, as I see when I get there, is a pretty good sized puddle. I imagine that probably somebody who was soaked decided to stop and have a chat on his way up. At the top of the stairs there's this little girl who lives in the place next door. She's bouncing a ball when I walk up, and I figure I must have startled her, because she looks up and the little ball goes boing-boinging down the steps. She stares at me for a second like I'm purple or made out of silly-putty or something, and then, like a shot, she takes off after the ball. The stairs curve all the way around, and so when she goes down one level I can look over the side and see her going down the next flight. I'm just watching her go down, when I remember the puddle. She's moving pretty fast for a kid her size, and after a minute's hesitation I start down in a hurry. I hear the ball's echoed bouncings stop when it finally hits the door to the street and settles. I come around the corner just in time to see her sandaled feet fly out from under her on the puddle-step. I'm still ten feet away -- even at this point I realize there's nothing I can do -- but I push myself to move faster. When I get to the puddle, though, my reflexes call everything to a halt, and I am forced to stand on the far side of the slippery wet place, watching her slide down and hearing the thththunk of her soft head on hardwood. I just stand there for the longest time, not really thinking about anything. Nothing like "how tragic" or "what do I do now", until some guy who lives on the first floor appears a few minutes later. He comes in to find us that way -- her lying there with feet turned in a skull cracked, and me on the other side of the puddle just staring. I know sometimes when you get hurt really bad, (like you get shot or something) it doesn't hurt because you go into shock. The adrenaline keeps you from feeling it at first, but later you feel it like normal. So the guy comes in, and he looks at the girl for a long time, like checking her pulse and everything. Then he looks up at me with this horrified expression on his face.
"I must really look guilty," I'm thinking, still pretty detached.
"What happened here?" He says it in this kind of desparate way, like he's reaching for something. He obviously knows exactly what happened, but what he really wants to ask is why am I just standing here like this? Why aren't there cops around? An ambulance? That's when it starts to hit me like this giant wave. I sit down real slow, enough on one side of the steps so people can get through all right. It just all gets me at once; it's never like "poor girl", but I could kill myself right here and not be able to tell you why.
"2B," is about all I can muster in the way of helpful information. "She's from 2B." I point mechanically, without looking. My neck feels all loose and in a minute I'm looking down at my shoes. Even from that point of view I notice the man taking special care of the puddle, and somehow it seems hypocritical to me. I'm not suggesting he should go hurrying through it and crack his own head, too, but something about his extra caution in the face of everything seems wrong. He goes up to 2B, and I guess he causes some kind of commotion because in a minute all kinds of people hear and come out of their apartments. The onlookers fit sort of into two categories: the kids and sickos who're all on their knees and crowded around the girl, and the others who are all on their feet and crowded around the parents. And people say I'M cold.
The guy must have told everyone that he didn't get a pulse, because now they're treating her body like some thing; some former person. Even though I'm not sufficiently "there" to feel the tangible sorrow of the grieving, the scene, with it's two camps, -- the obvious separation of living and dead -- still gives me a feeling of heartbreaking loss. Really, not so much for the loss of the girl's life, but more for the way everything gets more and more barbaric under this bizarre guise of civilization. And here I have to smile ever-so-slightly, because I know most people would look at me and say, "Him? Crying for lost humanity?" Anyway, there are a couple of cops poking around in no time since there's a mini station down the street, but still no ambulance. I keep expecting Sean to walk up any minute. Inevitably, our lovely boys in blue get around to me. Their incompetence is pretty well demonstrated by the length of time it takes them, but they finally do saunter over and one says,
"Why don't you just stand up and talk to us a minute here, kid." I do eventually stand, but not without the help of some very persuasive cop hands. Blinking, I try not to look overly insolent, although the routine is pretty well worked out ahead of time. They ask me a few questions that have little to do with the incident, which I answer honestly, and to the best of my ability despite their insinuations to the contrary. All the while I'm looking out for Sean, since I dread having to call Tommie up and get him to bail me out when these bozos drag me in. Then they ask me some stuff that does have to do with the situation at hand and I give them what I figure they want.
"What the hell is going on here?! What happened?!" The father comes up suddenly and grabs one of the cops by the arm, as if the officer himself had pushed his daughter down the stairs.
"Listen, sir..."
"Don't you listen sir me, you overgrown security guard! Do you see this?" He points to where his wife is now kneeling next to the corpse, wailing like a baby. The crowd pretty much dispersed when the cops arrived; no one wants to be too closely associated with anything that goes on these days. Little details have a habit of growing up overnight. "No leads on that bayou murder? Well didn't I see old so-and-so down there that night? Sure, sure. Looked kind of beat up, too, as I recall. Like he'd been strugglin' with somethin' or other." While the father continues to take it on himself to remind the cops of their duties and make up new ones, I recognize my cue to get lost. I inch down until I'm out of their peripheral vision and then slip away, unnoticed as far as I can tell.
I wander aimlessly for a while, not really knowing what it is that Sean does all day without me. The best thing, I finally decide, is just to hang out until she's supposed to be at work. She tends bar at the Zephyr and that seems like as good a place as any to ask her what the fuck's going on with her sister and the gangsters who're looking for her. Whatever I do, I know I can't go home tonight. It doesn't even matter that the cops've got an excuse for questioning; if they were to catch me loitering anywhere, anytime, there's no way those pigs'd pass up a chance to offer me a not-so-friendly reminder of my place in society. Not that they need to. It begins to get dark out, and the way the street's deserted but I can still hear shuffling and scraping as I go is more than a little spooky. Just the kind of atmosphere that makes a person glad to be young and glad to be free. Not Webster's freedom, you know, but freedom as a state of mind; the sort of freedom that youth has to snatch from the gaping jaws of age and take advantage of before it's too late. On nights like these, when I can feel this freedom replacing the blood in my veins, I want nothing but to be young, brutal and blissfully ignorant. On nights like these, it's only natural to look up Ziggy.
Sean's sister, Alice, has been off and on with Ziggy for a couple of years now, and that's how I met him. He is my only guy friend, ( "guy " being distinguished from "guy" by an emphatically clenched fist/bicep combination) which is sad since, because of this, I see him often. In fairness, though, I need Ziggy about as much as I need anyone else, with the possible exception of Tommie. (And if you tell him I said that, I'll punch your lights out.) When I feel the need to be strong, and cruel, I can be these things with him and he isn't hurt; he is a man. Or so I hear. Were I any meaner to Tommie than I already am, the old bugger would probably kill himself; were I any more assertive with Sean, the bitch would likely kick me out. When I'm mean to Ziggy he decks me we're pals again. Who doesn't need a friend like mine?
I walk down Ziggy's street, with steam coming up out of the manholes and cars swish-swishing across the pavement like giant hover-beetles. There isn't much going on, so I start to imagine I'm in some kind of futuristic espionage movie. The sleeping newspaper vender flashes me an undercover sign as I go by; the business woman in the power suit is a bug-planting spy. I slink stealthily down one block, then hurry up another. The cult member just outside Ziggy's apartment hands off the secret device to me, hidden inside a bunch of roses; the camera in the elevator is sending film back to the Soviets. I try to hide my face.
"Awww...for ME? THANKS." He snatches the roses out of my hand and ruffles my hair obnoxiously. Slightly irritated, but still on my adrenaline high, I put my hand on his chest. Ziggy is a barrel of a guy, and since it would be physically impossible for me to push him out of the doorway, this is a symbolic gesture only. He moves aside, revealing the seldom equaled, but often surpassed splendor of his certainly humble home. Only now does it occur to me that Alice might be here, and I can see she isn't. Although, with Ziggy's pad you can never tell. Is it possible that Alice (or anyone else, for that matter) is hiding underneath this pile of dirty clothes here by the door? Could she be crouching behind that empty beercan pyramid there next to the moth-eaten, might-as-well-be-sitting-on-the-floor couch? Not for long, unless she remebered her trusty industrial-strength, military issue gas mask.
"God, man, what died in here?" I wonder out loud, as I nudge the pyramid gently with the toe of my left creeper. Now, surely I should know better than to disturb Ziggy's newest architectural accomplishment, (deep down I probably do) but for the moment I'm giving more attention to the idea that my question, if taken literally, would not have been completely ridiculous. I decide to observe a moment of silence for Ziggy's old hamster, Buddy, who was missing for three days and dead for at least six before his tiny body was discovered inside an empty Dorito bag under the coffee table. Ziggy must not share my reverence for the dead, because he quickly tackles me away from the beer can creation and onto a rotten, quarter full bean bag chair.
"Oof." We might as well have landed on the floor. He gets up so he can look down at me.
"Man, do you know how long that took me?" Were these any ordinary beer cans, I would imagine that yes, they would take a long time to put together that way, but, knowing Ziggy's habits, they're all probably three weeks old, with enough sticky residue to keep them totally stable in their current formation for weeks to come. Disgustingly, I figure that that's probably his very intention. Takes all kinds? Anyway, the thought of asking him about Alice flies like a bullet through my mind, and I make no attempt to slow it down and tame it into a sentence. All I want right now is to be unpunishably violent. I'm angry at no one and everyone, about the abundance of nothing and the lack of everything. This isn't exactly my natural state, but as far as I have ever been able to tell, Ziggy is nothing else. So who better for me to run with this night? Who better to feed off of?
"Fuck. You." After suitably dulling our senses with some cheap beer and loud dance music at a club down aways from Zig's apartment, we take to the streets. It's a chilly night, and I have purposely left my jacket among the beer cans and rotting mattresses, knowing what the cold does to a body. I can feel the blood pumping in my arms, trying to warm me up; I can hear my heart pounding. Ziggy scrapes the bottoms of cleated feet across the newest of the cars parked along the curb, but even in my daze I'm above following suit. I can only skip along, bashing trash cans with my fist and slamming into him every once in a while to release energy. I feel relieved of societal pressures; released from the inhibitions the free world accepts in order to stay that way. I can do things without considering the consequences. I am free. I am not myself, but I am free. Finally, we come to a cross street, on the other side of which is the bane of Ziggy's existence. One might imagine that this would bother me...that it would be difficult for me to call myself the friend of a person whose most pressing concern is living a block down from a queer bar. One would be quite reasonable in imagining this, although I, myself, have never been a very reasonable guy. I am, however, as honest as they come, (or, at least, I'm as honest with everyone else as I am with myself. For what that's worth...) and I say that this problem of Ziggy's bothers me little. Understanding, compassion, kindness... I'm not here so he can be virtuous and human. What good would he do me that way?
"Yo, check that one out..." We've stopped, and he elbows me, pointing at a little man who looks as if he's just gotten off the tube train and is on his way home from work. Complete with umbrella. He is shuffling guiltily away from the bar, head down, with a skin-colored vice gripping the briefcase sturdily from underneath his italian-linked cuff.
"That looks like Marcy's dad!" His cackles are lost on me, as I've suddenly become engrossed in the simple, yet extremely difficult task of drilling a hole through a wooden bench with a screwdriver I got out of a dumpster.
"Hey, c'mere..." he says conspiratorally, tugging at my shirt sleeve.
"Huh?"
"C'mon, I wanna mess with him." I look up to see the guy coming in our direction, but on the other side of the street. His body language clues me into the fact that he's noticed us, and he's already imagined all of the awful things we might have in mind to do to him if he comes too near, and possibly some that would never occur to us. Well, they might occur to me, but not Ziggy. He can't imagine the old fag's secret fears. I can. Why doesn't that stop me? I know you're wondering this, because I am wondering it, too. Even as I follow him across the street, I'm wondering it. I'm wondering it as we stalk our prey. As we sneak up behind him, never minding passers-by who may or may not be awake enough, sober enough, or interested enough to take notice, I'm wondering where I am, why I'm there, and what it says about me. Even as we take him down, I wonder, and I don't stop wondering when I employ my screwdriver in a way that probably isn't my victim's idea of a successful Saturday night. I'm still wondering.