And Crawling Things Lurk

Jackie set his two bottles on the counter next to the cash register and looked up at the face behind the counter. His focus was a bit blurry, but he could tell it was the same guy that was always there. He couldn’t remember the lasts time he had made eye contact, so he smiled. Why not? He was feeling good for some reason and saw no reason not to pass it on. When he didn’t receive a return smile, he felt his own fade away. Feeling more normal, he started fishing out his money.

With close to the right amount in his hand, he extended it toward the man, but no hand came forward to receive it. He had already killed the first bottle the guy sold him this morning, he had friends waiting to share these fresh ones, and he was feeling good, so t’hell with ’im. He laid the money gently on the counter, and then graced the stern face before him with an even wider grin. T’hell with ’im.

He picked up his change, moving one coin at a time to a selected pocket, and grinning as he reached for the next while never breaking eye contact. The guy could have just walked away to do some task waiting for his attention elsewhere in the store, but Jackie figured he just didn’t want to leave the register or the stocked shelves unattended with him so near. Some day, the guy would probably do like all the other stores and refuse to allow him in. But, for now, today, the man seemed to be happy enough to take the money. T’hell with ’im.

With his purchase properly bagged and receipted, Jackie flashed one last grin, turned and headed out the door. With the warmth of an early summer day awaiting him, thus eliminating the need to bundle up before going outside, he was nimble enough to avoid the closing door.

“Two of’em!” It was Erica that turned at the sound of the door closing. “That bag looks like it’s got two, Josie.”

“Two? And there’s only the three of us? Why, you must be feeling extra generous, Jackie…or,” with a wink added to her smile, “could it be something else?”

Still grinning, he walked between the two women who latched one onto each arm, turned and matched paces with him as they all continued down the sidewalk. “What’re you talking about? I’m always generous.”

Josie’s laugh was light. “Sure you are, sugar, except when you’re not.”

“Ah, he’s always ready to share. It’s just that sometimes his friends’re not properly deserving. That right, hon?”

Jackie looked down at his two friends, grinned, and said, “Uhh…maybe sometimes. But not today. Today is good. Today you guys are good. Today…today I’m horny. How about some lovin’, Josie?”

Josie’s laugh was high, wide and loud, and her smile following it left no doubt that she was amenable. “I thought there might be something else goin’ on in that head o’ yours. I think I might just take you up on you proposition, Jackson. I could use a bit of lovin’, myself.”

“Ah, Josie, you’ve always got our love,” Erica said as she poked her head forward, so she could see around Jackie. “You know that.”

Josie answered with a smile and a wink. “Yes, I do, sugar. But a woman likes to be reminded now and then, too, with that special kind of love only a man can deliver.”

Jackie’s grin spread even wider, and he said, “I’m gonna remind you, alright. Again and again and again.”

The three held each other up as they made their way down the sidewalk, laughing and jostling back and forth. They were still at it when they encountered Doug Keller half a block later.

The man was walking down the middle of the sidewalk as he approached them. The trio would have to either split up to allow him to pass between them or realign to single file to pass him on one side of the narrow sidewalk or the other. There was room for Keller to pass them on the inside when they all moved to their right next to the curb, but only if he would relinquish his right to the middle. He maintained his position until they were all forced to stop to avoid colliding.

“Stop blocking the sidewalk,” he demanded.

Jackie’s smile disappeared, replaced by the scowl he usually wore in the face of anyone not from the Hole. His mind swirled with responses, and he wanted to use one. He just couldn’t get his mind to settle on one, or to work the mental gymnastics to prioritize them. He was still trying to get his brain in the right gear when Josie spoke up.

“We’re not blocking the sidewalk. No more than you are.”

“You’re blocking my way. Move over.”

“We did move over. There’s plenty of room to go past. You just have to move over a little, yourself.”

Keller puffed out his chest and swiveled his head as he took in the three. “I’m not going to move one inch for the likes of you bunch?”

Erica had moved over to the curb and was about to step down into the gutter, but Josie grabbed her arm and pulled her back. “No, Erica. Don’t do that. We’ve got just as much right to use the sidewalk as anyone.”

Erica rejoined Jackie, but she stood so he partially shielded her from Keller’s glare. Jackie returned the glare, but he remained silent. He simply couldn’t get his tongue to form the right words among the hundreds to choose from swirling in his mind.

Keller’s response was a snort and a sneer, to which he added, “Not in my world, you don’t.”

Josie stood with her hands on her hips and her jaw thrust forward. A slow grin worked onto her face, but her eyes reflected something other than mirth, something cold and painful.

“In my world,” Keller expounded on his world for the benefit of these unfortunates apparently unaware of it. “A man doesn’t yield to gutter trash. In my world, when garbage is in his path, a man is fully justified in kicking it out of the way. In my world, a woman knows how to properly respect a man.”

She still glared him full in the face, not flinching at all from the nearness of his finger jabbing within inches of her nose with each item of his world stressed. When he paused to assess the depth to which his points had been driven with the riff-raff before him, she spoke. “Yeah, I know. In your world, if a woman asks a man to pay for what he has consumed, she should expect a quick fist in her gut. If she protests, she should expect to be slammed to the ground where he can properly kick the shit out of her. And God help her if she dares to cry out in pain, as though she might actually expect someone to come to her aid and stop the assault. That’d just get her a shoe slammed into her face. Oh, yeah, Dougie, baby, I know all about your world.”

Keller aborted what would have been a hard shove sending the disgusting woman into the gutter where she belonged, withdrawing his hand, instead, back to clasp the other one in a white-knuckle grip. As her disrespectful words poured from her mouth, he gazed closer at her face while the events described by the words began to jar memories. His eyes got bigger and his mouth did a slow gape. He took half a step back and jabbed his finger at her again, but this time it was much farther from her nose. “You!”

Josie swiped her hand across in front of her face as though to shoo away an irritating fly and the pointing finger withdrew.

“I know you. What are you doing in my town? Why did you come here? We don’t want your kind on our streets.”

Josie looked around, turning her head first to the left, then to the right, then back to glare again into Keller’s face. “Your town? What, it’s named Dougieburg or Dougieville or something? I thought it was Cedar City. Is that your name? Huh? Are you Doug Cedar? And, what, you just go by Dougie when you go slummin’?”

He started backing up, but he continued to jab his finger at Josie. Jackie and Erica seemed to have been forgotten. When he was fifteen or twenty feet away, he demanded, “You get the hell out of my town! Get out!” Then he turned and fast-walked away.

“Ass-hole,” Josie murmured as she turned to rejoin her friends. “Come on, you two. I don’t know what I want more, some of Jackie’s bottle or some of his lovin’, so I’ll take both, thank you.”

Erica hooked an arm around Josie’s waist and hugged her. “You stood him down, Jo, just like a mean-tempered bear. You stood him down, good.”

Jackie finally found some words he could use. “That sombitch is always mean. Never seen him havin’ a good day, or even allowin’ someone else to have one.”

Josie hooked an arm around each of her friends’ arms and guided them on down the way they had been headed. “Well, Jackie,” she began, grinning, “you’d be a mean ol’ bear, too, if you didn’t have the hardware to make a lady happy – ’cept maybe a ladybug.”

Their howls of laughter easily reached Keller half a block away, and the scowl on his face twisted tighter.

At the Hole, the three friends settled to comfortable positions on the ground between Jackie’s space and Erica’s. They hadn’t stopped laughing for more than a few paces from the time they started with Josie’s aspersion of Keller’s sexual prowess. From there, they hit on Joe, then Ed, the clerk at the bottle shop, the driver of a taxi going past, the driver of a milk tanker truck going past that flipped them off in response to the laughter and the finger pointing at him. They especially enjoyed bad-mouthing Don Evans, then most of the city councilmen, and finally the mayor. By the time they settled to the ground, all they could do was lie there wheezing and gazing into the sky of approaching summer as they basked in the glow of ebbing hilarity generated by the mental images of each insinuation.

After a few minutes, Jackie sat up and took the first bottle from the sack. He held it up, turned it this way and that as though appraising the label as well as the liquid sloshing behind the glass until the other two began yelling for him to open it. Grinning, he did.

By the time Erica sucked down the last of the second bottle, almost two hours had passed. Jackie was feeling pretty good. The fuzz was there, but not so much that he forgot the treat Josie had promised. He rolled over onto his side facing her and propped his head up on his hand. He lay there ogling her less than three feet away where she stretched out on her back with one arm across her eyes to block the right sun and a relaxed smile softening the lines of hard-living. After a minute, she turned her head and laughed when she saw the way he was eyeing her.

“What’re you gawking at, sugar? You look like a love-sick puppy.”

Without taking his eyes from her reclining figure, he grinned and said, “You’re pretty good lookin’, Josie. You really are.”

“Wha…why, thank you, Jackie. I don’t know that you’ve ever said that to me, before. I kinda like it.”

“Well, it’s true. I mean that you are. And even if I don’t say it, I think it. All’a time.”

Josie sat up and looked over at Erica who was grinning back at her like an elderly aunt.

“Well, gosh on me,” Josie muttered, all but stammering. “I’m gonna work myself up to a right and proper blush if I stay here.” She pivoted around on her butt to face Jackie and reached out her hands to him. “Pull me up. You and me are gonna go find a place out of the public eye,” she winked over at Erica, “and then I’m gonna properly thank you for your kind and gentlemanly remarks – again and again…” And then after he had pulled her to her feet, “…and again.”

Half an hour later Erica was reaching for the first bottle they had killed with the hope they hadn’t fully drained it before starting on the second. Distant movement caught her eye, and she turned her head to watch Don Evans descending the slope. He waved to her and, grinning a toothless smile, she waved back.

“Hey, Erica,” he said when he was close enough to speak normally. “How’s things?”

“Aw, thing’s ’re good, Don. Sun’s warm, ground’s dry, and the wine’s sweet.” She held up the bottle in her hand, confirmed it was, indeed, empty, and added, “Well, it was.” Then, with a cackling laugh, she set it on the ground.

“I’m looking for Josie. Know where I might find her?”

Erica closed one eye and peered up at him with the other, as though she was seriously appraising him and the likelihood that he would probably find Josie, anyway. Still… “Oh, well, now, let me think, Officer Evans. Seems like I saw her just this morning – earlyish, it was. And then, I believe I recall seeing her a little bit later, walking around here at the Hole. You know, just sorta moseying about, not doin’ anything special, just movin’ here, there and –”

“Come on, Erica. She’s not at her space, but her cart is. Where is she? Nothing heavy’s going down. I just need to talk to her for a bit.”

Erica flapped her hand at Don, shooing away the very idea that she doubted him. “She and Jackie went over there into the bushes a while back. I ’spect they musta passed out by now. Careful you don’t step on ’em.”

Not even wondering why the two had gone into the bushes, Don moved over to the mass of shoulder-high brush through which narrow trails meandered. He grasped the nearest branch and gave it a good shake, rustling several bushes where they touched.

“Josie!” he called. “Josie! You in there? This is Evans. I need to talk to you.”

Murmuring drifted out from somewhere deep within the mini-wood.

“If you can you come out, we need to talk. I’ll wait over with Erica, but don’t be too long, okay?”

More murmuring as he was turning away, then, “Just a couple more minutes. …Okay?” She sounded like she was in the middle of ascending a long flight of stairs.

“Okay.” Don was still grinning when he rejoined Erica and had a seat on Jackie’s crate.

Erica eyed him while a big grin spread her cheeks. “That was real nice of you, hon. I take back all I said about you.”

He raised one eyebrow before asking, “Should I ask just what it was you said about me?”

Her grin suddenly erupted into howling laughter. After a bit, after catching her breath, she answered, “Naw, I wouldn’t.”

It was close to five minutes before the top of Josie’s head appeared above the foliage. She waved when she spotted Don and headed out toward him. It was faint, but Don could hear snoring behind her.

When Josie was closer, she grinned at Erica and said, “I swear, it’s like a light switch with a man; just wham, bam, and out like a light. Only this time, bless his hide, he made it to wham, bam, bam. I think I still owe him another bam. Or he owes me one. We’ll work on it. Hi, Don.”

“Hi Josie. Hope I didn’t come at an awkward time.”

“Oh, it’s only awkward if you let it be. What do we need to talk about?”

She hadn’t sat down yet, so he stood. “I got a call from a Doug Keller. He reported that you’ve been soliciting for prostitution, and he demanded that you be arrested and/or run out of town. He didn’t mention tar and feathers, but he looked like he was thinking it. I thought you retired from the street after your injury.”

Her immediate response was to close her eyes and slowly shake her head. Before speaking, she walked over to Jackie’s crate and sat down. “I am retired, Don. The way I busted my pelvis jumpin’ out of that window, there ain’t no way I could service a bunch of Johns again. Not the way they insist on getting their money’s worth. I know, cause I tried. If they were as gentle as Jackie, I could still make it pretty good. But they’re not. Just when and where did Mister Keller say I was soliciting?”

“Well, you know, he didn’t really nail it down solid. He said you lurk about on street corners and dark doorways until someone comes along, then you slink out and entice the good men-folk of our city to engage in adulterous evil. He didn’t use exactly those words, but I’m pretty sure his meant about the same thing. Now, although I think I’m fairly observant on my patrols, even if the other guys on the department may not be, I can’t recall ever seeing you do such a thing – or heard of it from anyone else. And he implied that it’s more or less a daily occurrence. He didn’t mention why he was just now getting around to reporting it. Any ideas why he’d say such a thing?”

Her laugh was a short snort. “I ain’t been doin’ much slinkin’ for a while, now, ‘cept maybe when I’m workin’ on seducing Jackie. But I’ve got lots of ideas about your Mister Keller, or Dougie, as he’s known in some parts. Did he mention that we had met before? Did he mention that for more’n a couple of years he was a regular visitor to my turf down in the city? Did he mention that he was one of my regular Johns, or that he also bought the services of some of the other ladies of the night down there? Did he mention that our relationship ended when he finished his business one evening and started to walk away without paying? He was one of my long-time customers I no longer demanded payment ahead of time, so I was a tad shocked. Don’t know why he did it that time when he readily paid every other time. Same with the other girls. He always paid, never complained. But, for some reason, that last time he came to me, he didn’t want to pay. He’d been drinking more than normal, and I never realized he was that kind of a drunk. Hell, he might even have been on meth or something. Anyway, he left me with a busted nose, a couple of chipped teeth, and lots of bruises, pain and suffering. Far as I know, he never came back. Not to that neighborhood, anyway.”

“Did you know he was from Cedar City?”

“Nuh-uh. Johns hardly ever talk about back home, or even where home is. I s’pose they want to keep that part of their lives separate from their trips into the gutter. I knew him only as Doug – or Dougie when he needed a bit of coaxing to get over the hump. He never told me his last name, and I never asked for it or anything else about him. Always seemed to work better that way.”

Don put his notebook back in his pocket and glanced about the Hole. When his eyes came back to focus on Josie, he said, “And in the time you’ve been here, you never saw him around town?”

She cocked her head to one side while she though about it. “Gosh, I don’t know. I could have, I s’pose, and just didn’t recognize him. It’s not like he was the only customer I had, and it was better’n five years ago, ya know.”

Josie had lost her little, first-floor apartment when the fleabag building burned down, and she lost everything including the ability to support herself. After leaving the hospital she found herself on the street, and she quickly learned there was no way she could work at her old profession. Fortunately, she didn’t have a pimp to beat her back to the street-corners. She was only in her mid-thirties, but her career as a hooker was over. With no insurance, no follow-up care, and a lifetime of poor health in general, her broken bone just never heeled right. She kept meaning to apply for disability, but, somehow, just never got around to finding out if she could even qualify. She found she could manage with just bumming and begging, since she no longer had to invest in attractive, seductive clothing or make-up, and if she readjusted her expectations to exclude anything else that wasn’t vital. She soon discovered that most things she once considered essential, actually, were not. She drifted north. At Cedar City, the group at the Hole welcomed her to share a couple of bottles Jackie had brought down, and she stayed.

She could still provide for her friends on occasion, but it was easier to ask a friend to go gently than a paying John. When she had a bad day begging, though, she often teased herself with thoughts of returning to her previous trade. She still had the looks, she was pretty sure, if she ever made the effort to tone down some deficits and embellish what assets she could still identify to counter what otherwise might imply a harsh and over-lived existence. She was still well enough endowed in the right places, even if things were beginning to sag. She just needed a bit of toning. Her hair was long and light colored, what she termed ashen even if others did call it graying, and she usually wore it in a ponytail. It kept her looking younger, she said. Her emerald green eyes could still be arresting, although, it had been a long time since they had arrested anyone but Jackie.

“And, you know,” Josie continued, “Dougie and I hardly move in the same circles here in Cedar City. It ain’t a big city, but it ain’t all that small, either.”

Don chuckled at a thought and said, “I’ll bet he’s working up all kinds of responses to any questions that might come up if word of his other life gets out. He looked like he was sweating bullets when I talked to him. Do I need to ask you not to contribute to his ulcer?”

Josie’s chuckle matched his. She winked at Erica and said, “Oh, I think a little righteous sweating might do that ass-hole some good, maybe sweat some of the meanness out of him. But, he ain’t the only one that didn’t treat me like the lady I was – might have been the worst, though. You know what, though, he really ain’t worth the crud stuck on the bottom of my shoe, and just as forgettable once it’s scraped off. For sure, he needs to be told that the amount of space he’s takin’ up in this world ain’t as impressive as he thinks it is, but I won’t tattle on him. Don’t tell him that, though. Not for a while, anyway. Let him stew for a bit. Let him wonder if the whispers he can’t quite overhear in church are about him and his sinful past. And if he’s still making occasional trips to other cities around the area, maybe he’ll think twice about how he spends his time and money – and about paying for what he buys.”

“Well, that sounds like a reasonable compromise. I don’t know if Keller would be as forgiving as you, and I seriously doubt if he will appreciate your attitude, but I agree that a little sweating time may be beneficial to his soul. Can’t let it go too long, though. He needs to understand that making a false report of a crime is a crime, not to mention potential civil liabilities under the slander laws, but I’ll give him a couple of days, anyway – maybe even a week so he can have at least one Sunday in church.”

They all glanced over at the mini-wood emitting a steady drone when the snores switched to several jerky installments before evening out again.

Laughing, Josie explained. “Only Jackie can snore, burp, hiccup, and probably fart, too, all at the same time, and never wake up.”