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Haiku In 3D

Edward Alexander

    I scored some speed in G-ville, so me and Blondie could get a little bump. I parked the Chevelle a couple of doors down from Cuban Dave’s. Anybody in the know knew the Cuban would be holding. I gave Blondie enough bread to score an eight ball and waited in the car.
    She walked up the steps where two big dudes for muscle sitting on the porch gave her the up and down. Blondie pushed her Ray-Bans up and I knew she was giving them a wink. You would be hard pressed to find any male from eight to eighty who wouldn’t agree that she was hot as a pawnshop pistol. Blondie went through the front door and the two dudes on the porch turned their attention back to the street and stared at me. Maybe they were just being impressed with the Chevelle, maybe they were trying to be intimidating but that didn’t matter, I had my own nine-millimeter intimidation under the seat.
    Four of the Cuban’s girls were working the block, pulling over drive by johns. A blonde kid with ratty hair who couldn’t have been more than sixteen, already she had that thousand-yard stare. She walked up and tapped on the window. I cracked it an inch and told her to take a hike. She flipped a middle finger, walked not more than twenty feet in front of the car wearing a short short mini skirt and dirty white go go boots. She stood at the curb like a neon sign flashing and it worked. The next car pulled up and the chump dropped the passenger window all the way and she leaned in and it didn’t take half a minute for her to sell the blowjob.
    I was jumpy as a cat, parked on this cracked out hooker stroll; the reason was, I was holding thirty pounds of Gainesville Green in the trunk. Just then Blondie came out, stopped on the porch and said something to the two muscles and their stares glued right to her ass as she walked away. She slid in beside me and said, “I got it, let’s go.”
    “What took so damn long?” I asked.
    “Shit the dumb ass wanted me to go out and hook for em, kept trying to talk me into it.”
    ”Well,” I said, as I pulled the car out and damn glad to be getting gone, “You got to make a living.”
    She pushed the Ray Bans up on her head and said, “You know, you got the heart of a fifty year old whore,” then she gave me that wink.
    Just before I- 75, I pulled the Chevelle behind a strip mall. Blondie took out the stuff and dumped some on her compact mirror and mashed it into a power with the back of a lipstick holder. She had that long fingernail on the pinky of her right hand, she scooped it full and said, “Here,” she does it again for the other side; then does herself. Now with the trigger wound and a full tank of gas we hit the road for Texas.
    Blondie started talking, she would get wired and go on for hours. It was always the same, one topic falling right into another. She started talking about the rhinos disappearing and I put the bird-dog on and the hammer down. The Chevelle was a 70 with a 396 and fuelie heads and at ninety it was just coming up to cruising. By the time we got to I -10 the rhinos had been left way behind, now she was saying what a crying shame it was that, that damn actor had got in the White House. “Imagine.” she said, “The country being run by a damn actor and a cop.”
    “I don’t think George Bush was ever a cop.” I said.
    “Ran the damn CIA, how much more cop than that do you need?”
    “Well yeah,” I said. “There was that.” I turned on the CB and picked up the mike and it was like an off button to Blondie. There was an eighteen wheeler coning up on the other side of the interstate, I pushed the button on the mike and said, “How about it east-bound, how’s it lookin over your shoulder?”
    Through the highway static, the trucker answered back “It’s clean and green all the way to Tally Town,” which meant he hadn’t seen any state troopers as far back as Tallahassee.
    Skinny Dennis had got me this work, some friend of a friend had come to G-ville and bought the dope and was going to pay a dime an L B to have it driven. It was a quick three thou minus expenses for two days driving. Blondie was just coming along to get high and talk.
    Fifty miles out of Tallahassee she has the loaded pinky nail in my face again and is telling me about God, Buda and the seven chakras, how I needed to get out of my second chakra and move up to the third.
    “If there’s seven why stop at three?” I asked.
    “Cause you got to meditate for years to open your heart chakra, course a good dose of Orange Sunshine will do it too. Pull over so I can go pee.”
    Just outside of Pensacola, Blondie stopped talking, I asked if she wanted another bump and she took out the bag of crank, and handed it to me and said. “No, I’m done, stop before long, I gotta eat somethin.”
    I pulled into a truck stop and drank black coffee while Blondie ate a chicken fried steak. Not long after we went through Pensacola Blondie put her head back and closed her eyes and said, “Remember to sing that song when you go through the Mobile Tunnel.”
    “What song is that?” I asked.
    “You know the Bob Dylan song about Mobile and Memphis. I used to always sing it to myself when I’d drive through, on my way to Mississippi.” She closed her eyes and fell asleep with a smile on her face.
    Every fifty miles or so I took out the speed and put a little on the back of my hand and sniffed it off. I drove across the bottom of Alabama and Mississippi. I drove into Louisiana and crossed the Twin Span Bridge that runs six miles over Lake Pontchartrain. I was flying and every truck I passed I asked into the CB mike, “How about it east bound, how’s it lookin over your shoulder.”
    Just outside of New Orleans I stopped for gas and Blondie opened her eyes and asked, “Where are we?”
    “The other side of New Orlins, we’ll have breakfast in Houston.” As we drove through Southern Louisiana the windows were rolled down and a salt breeze from the Gulf blew across the coastal plain. The radio was playing Zydeco music, I turned the volume down low and we talked through the night, we talked about forever.
    The sun was coming up when I pulled into a pancake house on the other side of Beaumont. I called Skinny Dennis’s friend of a friend and he says he can’t see me until afternoon. I got the address and directions and bought a Houston street map. His house was easy to find, just off Telephone road. I drove by just to check it out, make sure there weren’t any cars with funny looking antennas parked near by.
    We got a motel for two nights on Telephone Road, showered, made love and I called down to the front desk for a wake up call in four hours.
    Just before I walked out to go make the delivery, Blondie sat up in bed “Hey, leave me some cash, so I can get something to eat and have a beer.”
    I had a fifty, a ten and three ones, I handed her the fifty. “That’s all we got,” I said.
    “Go get paid then,” she said and she gave me the wink.
    The friend of a friend was waiting at the front door, we both carried a duffle bag into his place and he set up a triple beam and checked the weights. Then he hit me with the bad news.
    “Look I can’t pay you, I mean I can’t pay you today,” he said.
    “What do you mean you can’t pay me! When?”
    “Maybe two days or you can take some dope. I’ll give you two elbows.”
    “What the hell can I do with weed in a strange city?” He stood and for the first time I noticed that he’s way too big to threaten and the Glock was still in the car under the front seat. After I calmed down some I saw the possibilities for the better payday. I could take the dope, carry the pot back to G-ville, ounce it out and make another two grand. All I had to do was sell an ounce or two for traveling money; so I took the pot. Each of the thirty L Bs was individually packaged in freezer bags; I took two of them and opened one. The friend of a friend set up the triple beam again and weighed out four o zs, putting each in sandwich baggies. I put it all in a black garbage bag and put it in the trunk behind the spare tire, then without even a handshake drove away.
    Back at the motel, Blondie was laying on the bed watching ‘The Price is Right.’ “Hey handsome,” she said, “You gonna to buy me a steak dinner now?”
    “I didn’t get paid, least not in money,” I said, closing the door and leaning against it.
    “What’d he give you diamonds?” She put the remote on mute.
    “Pot, I just gotta sell a little and we’ll be fine.”
    “And just how you plan on doing that, gonna make a sandwich sign and stand on the corner?”
    “I thought I’d find a bar that looks right and just sit there, I saw a biker’s bar a couple miles back. I can just nurse a beer and start conversations until the right person comes along, hell it’s gonna be someone’s lucky day.”
    “Shit, you’ll get busted,” she said and walked to the bathroom strips off the tee-shirt and jeans and brushed her golden hair then took a dress from her bag and slipped it on, it was turquoise blue and slinky with little straps.
    “What the shit you think you’re doin?” I asked.
    “Going to go make enough to get us home.”
    “No way,” I said to her. “You ain’t gonna go out and sell pussy.”
    “You don’t boss me sweetie,” she said. “Besides next time you look, you won’t even notice none is gone.” and she walked out.
    I waited five minutes then went to the car and took the pistol from under the seat and put it in my waistband. I zipped up the windbreaker to hide the gun and followed her to the Red Lobster next to the motel. There was a barroom on one side of the restaurant and Blondie was sitting at the bar and she already had a chump sitting beside her, leaning in close. I took a booth next to the window where I could watch Blondie’s back. I ordered a Budweiser and checked out the room. There were two guys sitting in the back that didn’t look right. One was dressed in a suit and tie, he even had on wingtip shoes; his companion was a middle aged, over weight hippie, whose clothes looked too new. Then Blondie and the chump stood, he left a bill on the bar and they headed for the door. “Damn,” I said to myself, “She don’t take long. Hot as a pawnshop pistol.”
    Then the two guys who didn’t look right stood and walked out, I noticed their drinks were left unfinished and I knew Blondie was being set up. I saw the whole thing through the plate glass window beside me. Blondie and the chump had only gone about twenty steps towards the motel when the two guys who didn’t look right were out the front door and the chump grabbed her tight by the shoulder. It didn’t take up two minutes, they had her cuffed and in the patrol car that must have been waiting out of sight. There was nothing I could do but go back to the motel room where a notice taped on the phone said ‘FREE LOCAL CALLS.’ I called the jail and found out that I couldn’t see Blondie until after she was arraigned the next morning. I got the Courthouse’s address and lay awake watching late-night television and thought about bad luck. To work a bar that the vice cops were working the same night, just bad luck. I fell asleep with the TV on.
    I arrived at the Courthouse early and ended up waiting half the day. It was the middle of the afternoon before she was brought in. She was in line with a dozen or more other women. Blondie was the seventh one to stand in front of the Judge and was charged with pandering and given a twenty thousand dollar bond. We make eye contact before she was walked out a side door, she gave me the wink but it was only half assed. A Bailiff told me I couldn’t see her there at the Courthouse but I could visit her at the Jail. An hour later I was sitting in a small cubical across from Blondie with three inches of Plexiglas between us. She looked tired and worn and now was wearing an orange jailhouse jump suit. She picked up the phone and before I could say a thing she said, “I can’t take it in here, get me out.”
    “Ten percent of twenty thousand, all I got is that product.” I said. “You got anybody I can call?”
    “I don’t have anybody left, I’ve run out of selections.” Then she said, “Nothing last forever anymore.”
    She stood and hung up the receiver and was turning away as I said into my phone, “You hang in there.” She couldn’t hear me but she turned and looked me in the eye and didn’t wink.
    Across from the Jail there was half a dozen bails bonds signs on the windows. They would all be the same price, those guys never have specials. I was told what I already knew, two thousand dollars up front to get it done. Excluding armed robbery there was only one way to make two grand fast and that was to revert to plan A, sell the pot, all of it. I went back to the motel and waited until evening.
    I drove back to the biker bar I’d seen the day before, it looked to be the kind of place that you could come right out and ask someone if they wanted to buy two pounds of homegrown marijuana. The place was already crowded, at least twenty bikes parked in the gravel parking lot. A group wearing leather jackets with the Bandidos patch sewed on the backs were standing there drinking beer. I parked and sat in the car and watched, this could be tricky. I had to weigh the options. I’d lose the two grand that I would put up for the bond because she would skip for sure. Hell I could get robbed but I wouldn’t let that be easy or I might have to kill somebody and the truth of the matter was, I hadn’t known Blondie that long. Then I thought about forever. I took the pistol from under the seat and stuck it in my waistband, I left the windbreaker unzipped so the outline of the gun was plain to see. I took the garbage bag from behind the spare in the trunk and took out one of the o zs. As I walked across the parking lot the bikers were all checking me out and I knew they all saw the outline of the Glock. There was one that seemed to be the center of the group. He was big and tall with red hair pulled back in a ponytail, a red beard clipped short. He didn’t have his leathers on, his jacket was draped over the handlebars of the nearest bike. The front of his T-shirt said, ‘WHAT DID BUDDHA SAY TO THE HOTDOG VENDER—.’ I walked up and stood in front of Red Beard. He was smiling and gave me the up and down and said, “You looken’ for the O K Coral Stretch,” it wasn’t a question.
    I held out the ounce of homegrown, “I got two pounds of this, I’ll sell it for three thousand.”
    He took the baggie, unzipped the seal and held it up to his nose. “Why so generous?” he asked and he held onto the bag.
    “I need to go someone’s bail, I got to raise the ten percent.” I said.
    He nodded his head in understanding, “You got it here?”
    “It’s in the car.”
    “Show me,” he said and along with the group followed me to the Chevelle.
    I popped the trunk and opened the garbage bag. “This is Gainesville Green,” I said. “I brought it from Florida myself.”
    He leaned over checked out the product then dropped the baggie he was holding in with the rest of it, stood and said, “Bring that inside.” He turned and headed back to the bar, I took the dope and followed “Nice ride,” he said over his shoulder. The back of his T-shirt said, ‘MAKE ME ONE WITH EVERYTHING—”.
    I felt a little apprehensive carrying a garbage bag of dope into a strange bar, so I said to Red Beard’s back, “You wanna do this right here?”
    “You got nothing to worry about, you on my playground now,” he said. “Besides you got your pistol.” Two of the other bikers that had come along laughed.
    The barroom was crowded with Banditos and biker chicks but there’s one guy in a booth that looked completely out of place. He was dressed in a suit and a loosened tie, there was two biker chicks sitting with him. Red Beard walked up to his table, leans down and whispers in his ear, the suit said something back to him and Red Beard took the product from me. The suit took one of the freezer bags out and put it on the table in front of God and everyone. He opened it and took a good sniff. Then him and Red Beard talked low and Red Beard turned to me and asks. “The weight right?”
    “It’s right on the money,” I said.
    “Twenty-five hundred,” he said.
    I figured it was not the time or place to haggle, I nodded, and said, “Ok.”
    Then Red Beard took me by the arm and said, “Lets step back outside, leave the dope here.”
    I left the pot at the table with the dude, if this was a rip off I told myself I was going to shoot Red Beard right in the head.’ Outside in the parking lot we stood around waiting until another biker came out and handed me twenty-five one hundred dollar bills. I counted the cash and held out my hand to Red Beard, he didn’t shake but said, “You should get on out of here.”
    I bought a fifth of Smirnoff and went back to the motel where I sat in the dark and drank half the bottle before I could sleep.
    The next morning the first bail bondsman that unlocked his front door, I was there. I laid the two thousand down and he made a phone call then had me sign a few papers and I walked with him across the street to the jailhouse. We took an elevator up to the third floor. There’s a thickness of desperation that’s in all jailhouses, it’s in the air and on the walls. I could feel it as we rode up the elevator, like the film that builds up in a greasy hamburger joint. On the third floor I took a seat on a bench in the hall and the bondsman went to take care of business. It seemed a little too soon that the bondsman was back, along with a cop in uniform.
    The bondsman sat beside and said, “Your friend is dead, she hung herself.”
    I guess I must have been in shock because I asked, “Can I get my money back?”
    “Of course,” said the bondsman.
    “Were you Family?” asked the cop.
    “No, I was just a friend, I came to bail her out.”
    “She left a note with an address and phone number in Mississippi, we already called, they’re going to make arrangements to have her body shipped home.”
    “She had a pair of sunglasses, I’d like to get ‘em, if I could,” I said to the cop.
    “I’m sorry,” he said, “but all her stuff needs to be returned with her to the family.”
    “We were friends,” I said. “We could’ve lasted forever.”
    “Wait here.” He walked away and returned with the Ray-Bans and handed them to me saying, “You didn’t get these from me.” The sunglasses were tortoise shell Wayfarers with scratches on the glass. I put them on and pushed them up on my head the way Blondie did.
    The bondsman returned the money; I filled the gas tank and put what was left of the eight-ball on the seat beside me. Just as I was leaving Houston a slow rain started falling and it rained all the way until I reached Mobile. I didn’t put the bird-dog on, I just put the hammer down and flew and I never slowed under a hundred. Maybe it was the rain that kept the troopers with their radar away, or maybe they just thought better of it when I flew by but I didn’t see a cop one.
    The Wallace Tunnel are two tunnels, built side-by-side, one for Eastbound and one for West; they go under the Mobile River. The tunnels are round and tiled in white and lit up very bright and it looks like you’re driving down a long hospital corridor. Suddenly I was crying and at the same time singing, Bob Dylan, out loud.

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