I open my eyes to a greasy tin ceiling & the smell of oil and gasoline.I’m on the floor, just a thin bare mattress between me and the cold cement. Cogs & gears & metal greasy things I can’t name litter the floor around me. It’s the itching that wakes me. My arms, my legs, my thighs, my crotch. I scratch till I bleed. I scratch some more.
From where I lay I can just make out the corner of 2nd & Houston through a grimy window. The back end of the motorcycle guards the open front door. That makes this Havasha’s bike shop. My muscles scream as I turn my head to look. He’s here. On a pile of dirty yellow cushions a few feet away, curled into a dark sleeping ball of leather, grease, sweat, and hair. Scratching & twitching in his sleep like a dog.
I pull myself up, every part of my body objecting, loudly. I stand, stretch, and take a step towards the open front door. My muscles scream again as I fall down. Or maybe that scream came out of my mouth this time.
I have no idea how I came to be with Havasha. One day I looked up & he was here. His short thick body squatting on muscular haunches in front of me, tilting his furry head first this way and then that, sniffing the air around me. Squatting there, jeans streaked with motorcycle grease and street dirt, chestnut hair dry and matted in clumps, square yellowing teeth in a sweet crooked smile just this side of madness, he was troll-like. Trolls knew the secrets of the universe, they were the ones that knew the way back home.
A drink is what I needed, he said. A drink is what I always need, I thought.
I hadn’t had a drink since the night at the Porkpie. Was that only two days ago? Was that possible? I’d lost count of the days and nights since Red Wolf went crazy. Too much big & scary squeezed into too few tiny and fragile days. Nothing fit. Nothing made sense. I was afraid to squeeze one more thing in, afraid the boundaries would snap, the walls would collapse, everything would crash down on top of me, crush me, windows & bones breaking, cockroaches filling my mouth, forcing the sweet breath out of my lungs.
A drink is what I needed, he said. And a good time.
I was on the couch, under fresh white cotton sheets with bouquets of tiny daffodils, eating toast and blackberry jam in the soft morning light, waiting for my mind to sift back to normal, sipping chamomile tea, mumbling nonsense quietly to myself, letting people pet me, stroke me, feed me, care for me.
And then I wasn’t.
Hundreds of sharp cold wet silver needles pierce my skin & cry down my face. I hold tight to Havasha’s thick leather waist, burying myself in the matted fur at the back of his neck. I have a belly full of mescaline and vodka, my legs clampled tight around the bike beneath us, screaming into the storm, racing down Second Avenue, hurrying us away from the wet that threatens to melt our marzipan bodies. The asphalt, slick with oil and water, shrinks back, exposing old cobblestone streets and ghosts of horse drawn carriages. I screech and howl along with the roaring engine, letting the sharpneedles fly into my mouth, pierce my tongue, fill my throat, willing the monster to leap and soar over the panel truck that is parked, directly in the path of our mescaline blind ride.
It’s dark and quiet under the truck. Out of the way of the pounding silver rains. My fingers play over smooth irregularities of peach cobblestones, making designs in drops of blood there. I watch tiny rivers form between the stones, swirling, flooding and carrying away the dirt, washing away the little red droplets.
“You O.K.?” A voice from far away, from inside the rains, from inside the dark under the truck, from the other side of the flood. A man’s voice. I look up. Havasha squats above me, silver drips off the rugged terrain of his dark face, filling my little rivers, cooling my skin now. Leather paws hook into the crevices under my arms, pulling me out of the dark under the truck and into the darker wet night. Leaning against the truck that interrupted our flight, I watch him rummage around, grunting and growling as he pulls and tugs and struggles torescue the bike, still trapped under the panel truck. Together, we free our friend, loyal to the end as we mount her again, she coughs, spits and then hums off, carrying us into the sparkling damp indigo night.
Hours that are days that are minutes that are months pass, time has become irrelevant & indistinguishable . I cannot tell now from then, shall from did, soon from was, and I wonder if Havasha is as tired and sore as I am. My eyes burn, my muscles ache, my mind searches for a soft dark place to sleep. My hair hurts. I wonder what happened to everyone else. We have not spoken a word aloud since the accident that we’ve both forgotten by now. The sun is up once again and I close my eyes as we ride into the blinding white of it.
When I open them again, it’s gray, I itch & I ache. The heel to my right boot is gone, the leather in shreds. I can see my foot through the tears. It’s covered with dried blood, mine I assume. The right leg of my pants is torn open and caked with dried blood, mine again. Dirt, grease, pebbles, torn skin, urine, dark clotted blood. Same for my right arm, only not so badly. My back aches in a way that lets me know I’d find scrapes & bruises there too if I could only turn my head that far. My left side seems intact, just dirty and itchy. I poke and prod, checking for damage, breaks or fractures. Nothing. Bites, bruises, blood, yes, but nothing broken. My lucky day.
I ache all over.
Havasha rolls over, mumbling & scratching, a small pool of spittle glistens in the coarse dark hairs of his beard. I pull myself up again, leaning on a wooden chair and a wall for support. I look around, trying to figure out what happened, how I came to look & smell this bad, feel this bad, hurt this much, what comes next.
Cars speed by outside, honking & yelling. Everyone everywhere is in a hurry to get somewhere else. Everyone has somewhere to hurry from and someone to hurry home to.
Where do I go when my day is over? A hazy picture of my “husband” Red Wolf floats in the grime in front of me. Slowly, I remember my week.I remember the fight. The Bible he beat me with. The police. Getting fired. The fire. The roaches. Ohmigod, my apartment is still filled with roaches. Thousands of roaches are still in my home, in my kitchen, my bed.
Nowhere to hurry from & nowhere to hurry to.
Names and numbers of no one I know are written on the wall above a desk piled with more dark & oily mechanical things. There’s an old black rotary phone in a corner, hidden under dirty napkins and empty Chinese food containers. I hold the receiver to my ear and dial slowly, afraid ofwaking the sleeping troll.
“Michael,” my voice hoarse from not speaking for so long, “I want to come home.”
I place the receiver gently back in its cradle and slip out the door, leaving Havasha to fight his own demons there on the yellow cushions. I wonder if he’ll even remember I was there. I left a gouge in the wall where my name and number had been.
Sitting on the curb, wait for my rescue, watching cars speed by, people rushing home, no one speaks to me. Not even a bum stops to ask me for change or a cigarette. I’m smoking my last few cigarettes when Michael pulls up on his Harley. We’ve been friends forever, I can tell how bad things are by the look on his face, by the way he can’t even get the words out to joke about it.
I swing a leg over the back of the Harley, hug him tight and point to Havasha’s bike by way of an explanation. It’s all I can manage. It’s enough for now. Mangled gears. Bright metal torn and twisted. Leather seats sprinkled with dried blood and dirt. Handlebars contorted and compressed. Just a big shiny scrap metal sculpture now. Did we ride it like that?
I wrap both arms tightly around Michael’s waist as he kicks the Harley to life. “Home, ” I whisper, “but please, just drive slow.”
