Kill Kill Faster Faster (7 page)

J
oey can’t fuck, man. All those years away. All those years dreaming. And Joey can’t fuck. What’s the matter with Joey, man? What’s the matter with Joey? Why can’t Joey fuck?

Joey can only get himself off.

All those years in lockup, man.

Joey can’t fuck.

Joey says, Hang on, Flowers. Hang on, girl. Here we go.

Joey knows Joey.

Joey says, Tap my balls.

Like this?

Yeah, like that. Yeah.

Joey moans when he come. He moans small moans. To himself. He go: Huh. He go: Huh-huh. Joey go: Hmm. Huh-huh.

Joey can be very insecure. He can be very out front and very over the top, but he can be very insecure.

Joey worry he can’t do Flowers right. He worry what he doing for Flowers. He worry how long Flowers gonna stick around if Joey can’t fuck her proper. If Joey can’t fuck her right.

Flowers been on the street. Flowers was a very young prostitute in Marseilles. She run away from her family, from her mother and father and brothers and sister in North Africa. Flowers a
beur.
She was a prostitute. You could buy her. You could buy Flowers. She was for sale. You paid your money and you had Flowers.

Or Flowers had you.

She wrote about it. She kept a diary. Flowers wrote about being a very young prostitute in Marseilles. She wrote about running away from her family, from her mother and father and brothers and sister. She wrote about the men. She wrote about being brutalized. She could be funny and cruel and right on the money.

She wrote a book call
Profession: Prostituée.

Her book did well in France. It did better than well. It was published by some big French house and was widely promoted. Her picture was everywhere. Her picture was fetching. She look like a prostitute or a very young girl. She says she was on television. She told me. She was on TV with this guy named Pivot who is like the Walter Cronkite of France. Pivot was quite taken with Flowers. On television she came across very well. With Pivot she was quite tantalizing. People took to her. Especially males. At the Frankfurt Book Fair, her publisher sold the American book rights to an American publisher for a considerable sum of money with the understanding that fetching Flowers would be available to do major promotion in the States.

After meeting her for cocktails, the American publisher considered it a given that she would have no trouble on the talk shows, Letterman, Conan O’Brien, Oprah, Ricki Lake. Flowers would have no trouble. Her English was honed, charming, endearing, and eminently sexy. Flowers was sexy. Sex sold. The American publisher knew that.

J
oey walking on Eighth Street, left the halfway, gripped his jacket close at the neck, against the evening chill, even if it wasn’t exactly cold, glanced at the scratched brass plaque, could have been for the first time, never before caught his eye, the sign not flashy, but a municipal afterthought type thing, New York State Bureau of Prisons Community Treatment Center, picked up his box cutter from where he stashed it every night in the weeds of the truck rental U-Haul lot on the corner of Bowery and Second, then doubled back, north, crossing Bowery to Cooper Square, hang a left, where he remember Wanamaker’s used to be when he was a boy, with his mother, shopping there on Saturday afternoon for socks, maybe mittens, get a upside-down ice cream cone at the cafeteria look like a clown face with little bit of peppermint eyes and nose and black licorice whip mouth.

Walking fast now, head down, already late for meeting Fleur, the streets full of people, night coming early now, the autumn rain cool, but pleasant in his eyes when he look up, him feeling like the end is near, like there is nothing left, if there ever was anything in the first place, who can tell, thank God for the city, the city giving him back something at least, making him feel whole, even when there was these tremendous gaps.

Everything was fucked up.

Everything is fucked up for Joey, in his mind, in the mess that is his mind.

No place for him out here, no place, the streets, the byways, the little hidey holes that make up this city and every city, every nook and enclave that he had ever known, sought refuge.

Joey don’t want to feel bad the way he do. He don’t need to. Joey don’t want to be feeling bad for himself, diminished like he is, like there is no use, like there is struggle and there is nothing. Sometimes he feel like he be better off in the lockup, everything simpler there, less complicated and demanding. There was no moral choice in the lockup. He did the best he could, tried to stay sane, gave advice when it was asked, stay out of people’s way. Helped those that asked for help. It seemed like so many people depended on Joey in the lockup. So many. That was the supreme irony because Joey could not help himself, never could.

You head is on straight, Joey, they would say. Keep it up.

And Joey would say, Yeah, right.

If you could see Joey now, glum, heading crosstown to rendezvous. If you could see him now. Wondering, worrying, thinking, ready. Ready to explode.

He look up.

Joey look up. Because he can feel it, he can feel it coming. Coming at him.

It’s his sense.

A bunch of boys is hanging, standing against the parking meters, in front of the hair cutter’s, hip-hop boys, white boys, twenty, twenty-two years of age, maybe they is pierced, maybe they is inked, Joey can’t remember, their hats crooked, bullshit, one of them looking at him, watching him from a long way off, Joey picking it up, feeling his eyes on him, the way Joey do, the way Joey can always feel other people’s eyes on him, the challenge, the boy saying when Joey get close, What you lookin’ at, motherfucker?

Joey taken aback. Joey not going to let it rest like he know he should, Joey saying, You, you ugly little piece of shit.

The boy grinning, standing up straight now, pulling himself up now, ready he think, ready because it’s not only him, but him and his posse against the world, he think.

Joey, before he know it, his hand in his pocket, his hand on the button of the cutter, pressing down and sliding the razor blade expose, before he know it, before he know what he doing, pulling the cutter out of his pocket, blade out, looking the boy in the face and backhand, one fell swoop, slashing, one clean slash, acrost the boy’s pink cheek, acrost his cold red nose, deep to the bone, the crimson exploding onto Joey, red blood spraying Joey’s face and jacket, and Joey barely stop, he just keep walking, not a hesitation, not a misstep, and Joey hear behind him a gulp and a cry and he hear, Hey, but Joey don’t stop and Joey don’t look back, Joey just keep going, the ugly little motherfucker, uglier now than he was before, uglier for life, Hey, what you looking at, you, you ugly little motherfucker.

Take that.

Take that.

Joey keep walking and he don’t even wipe the boy’s blood from his face where it sprayed him, where it rained and splattered, and he don’t bother, he leave it on his jacket and his lips, and there is Fleur at the Papaya King at the corner of Sixth Avenue, in the window, at the counter, seeing him, her face brightening, she smiling, her white teeth, and the blood-red blood maybe it don’t register on her, because, because, she don’t say nothing, just kiss him, taste the blood, slide a hot dog from where she had two in front of her, one for her, one for him, Joey, baby, she kiss him, and the blood is on his lips, and on her lips, not even his blood, or hers, there is only justice, the blood of the boy, and she say, Hey, baby, and the blood on his jacket front too, and she say, Hey, baby, and now she say, You all right, sugar? What happened? Is this yours, in reference to the crimson, and he say, No, no, it ain’t.

T
here’s a lot Joey want to say. There’s a lot he want to figure out.

Joey feel intimidated.

Why Joey feel intimidated? Joey a writer. Joey had a play on Broadway.

So don’t talk to Joey, but Joey don’t feel no writer.

Joey fuck up, Joey went to the lockup, Joey don’t feel like no writer, Joey feel like an ex-con fucking up royally.

But he can’t stop it.

Fleur called Joey interoffice. She all bubbly. She say as how she and Mec were going to go to some hotshot reading, hear some eighty-year-old Nobel Prize-winning poet read. But then something come up for a change and Mec can’t go, Joey want to go with her, be her date?

She come to his office, close his door behind her, sneak a kiss, ask, so, is Joey coming?

She tease him, says how it’s black tie, is he ready?

He blink. For whatever reason, the black tie part don’t strike him real funny, but make him feel real uncomfortable.

He ask her she serious?

His eyes narrow when he ask her. He hold her eyes. He wait and see how much what he can see in her eyes.

He look at her face steady until he relax and decide finally to let himself go, that there is nothing there that is hidden, that is dangerous to him, that she don’t mean no harm or insult or injury, no evil intent.

She shrug, sense the test is over, smile, say no pressure, if he want to go fine, if he don’t, fine.

The bottom line was it wasn’t like he had choice. Not really. She had him. He knew it, and he feared that because he knew it, she knew it, and if she knew it, as he feared, then she had power over him.

It wasn’t that Joey didn’t trust Fleur. He trusted her, but Joey know things have the potential to change very quickly. A little nuance here, a little nuance there, and everything is different.

Joey was half waiting for the ax to fall.

Three quarters waiting.

So she dressed him up with some blackity-black fancy-pants clothes she got from somewhere, he didn’t know where and he didn’t ask and she didn’t offer, and they hailed a cab and went uptown to the reading, Fleur all over him in the cab, she take his hand by the wrist and she put his hand up her dress in the cab, inside her underwear, place his hand on her cunt, she saying, I don’t know what it is but I love your hand between my legs, and Joey feeling her cunt hair, gently tugging, her panties resting on the top of his hand, the back of his hand, Joey looking straight ahead, through the windshield, at the street, feeling and nodding and saying, Baby, yeah…

She direct the cabdriver to the Upper East Side, they get out of the cab, the time they get there Joey sniffing himself, smelling like a cunt.

She make her entrance to the library where the reading is being held, unperturbed, say hello, hi to a lot of people or at least more than him, who knows no one although she introduce him, Do you know Joey One-Way?, and there are some who know him already or know who he is by reputation, shake his hand, maybe, maybe reluctantly, and look at him and maybe, very definitely maybe they don’t trust him.

Or they smell the cunt on him and to his surprise when he sit down with all the shush, shush, the poet turn out to be some old man, decrepit, looking out from the podium.

Joey didn’t expect no old man. Joey forgot Fleur say the poet eighty year old. Don’t ask Joey why, but Joey had a picture, he thought the poet was a younger man, hearty, a poet in his prime, not at the end of his life, he had a picture of such a man in his mind, a image, rugged for some reason, a poet, someone he think Clinique had mentioned, maybe even had a book of his with a picture, gleamed from the prison library, probably why Joey thought the poet a younger man, because if he remember the book correctly, it an old book, a paperback, dog-earred and much read, Joey maybe even had glanced at a line or two of the man’s poetry, poem didn’t hold him he didn’t think, if he remembered correctly, didn’t read the whole poem, no way, what the fuck he did, the poet, sappy sappy, writing, naive, sitting there in the audience listening, listening to the voice, thinking this poetry is soft, this poet soft, making Joey mad, angry, the guy stopping at some point looking up, the audience captivated, even if Joey wasn’t, Joey hating everybody, every other person in the joint looking up adoringly, thinking the old guy the epitome of poetry in the modern culture and poetry as we know it, and the epitome of who knows what else, male intellectual sexuality and bravura, the old poet, blue watery eyed, intoning his poetry, a rhythmic cadence, and Joey sat there and he listened for a while till his attention wandered and his eyes went through the audience, looking at the manly writers, Fleur leaning over, her lips brushing the shell of his ear, touching his ear, telling him who is who as far as she knows, she says, regaling him with bits of tales and gossip, this one tried to seduce her, that one put his hand on her breast… and she laugh at them, these manly men, who’d touched her arm or kissed her cheek or pressed their chests to her chest, these studs and intellects, writers in tuxedos, writers in black tie, big egos, powerful visions.

And don’t forget what else Joey saw: the handsome women, the handsome women, women so handsome, so attractive, do something to Joey, in their low-cut evening dresses, showing their cleavage, their intelligence, their sex, and Joey thinking what’s happening? How’d he lose touch?

Women. Women.

Since before women, Kimba, she was the one, but Fleur made him think he was a man when she touched his chest or his cock and he had something manly to excise, he’s cocky, and he stood and he felt that cockiness and he felt a power, the same power, and such an overwhelming fear, and he listened to that old man read and his attention was called back by the man’s incredible voice and twang, as it almost turned on itself, a pastiche, but not quite, he saved it and it was moving, if you want to know the truth, and if Joey in any way could have let himself go, but Joey couldn’t and for whatever reason he found himself wondering how come some fuck like this eighty-year-old fuckhead poet, how come some fuck like that wasn’t his fucking father.