Four Blocks from Home
Paul Lewellan
I left the White Front near closing. The transition from humid, smoke-filled, blue-collar barroom ambiance to cool night air sent me into coughing spasms and gasps for breath. “Clean air will kill you every time,” I told the empty sidewalk when my breathing was restored. I zipped my Oscar Meyer windbreaker to protect me from the light rain and began the ten-block walk home.
I bought my house a marriage ago in hopes of building sweat equity and restoring its former glory. After gallons of sweat and no appreciable equity, I was trapped in Better Homes and Gardens Hell while my wife sends postcards from the rain forests of Costa Rica where she escaped with our realtor.
The tradition of walking home from the White Front began after my second arrest for OMVI. I later gained an appreciation for the practice. In ten blocks the scenery turned from booming businesses (strip joints, tattoo parlors, and pawn shops) to seedy housing (railroad flats, homeless shelters, and transient hotels) to Gold Coast homes (now low income apartments, crack houses, and restoration nightmares). The walk was uphill all the way.
In order not to be a target for roving packs of thugs, I attempted to look down on my luck. Fortunately, this was not hard. I taught English at the small Catholic high school across town. The only people who acknowledged my presence were the workingwomen who frequented the area. These ladies held a special fascination for me, especially on nights when the beer slowed my thought processes and the loneliness crept deep into my cortex. “Funny,” I remembered thinking, “I don’t feel fifty. I feel more like . . . dead.”
“Hey, looking for a party?”
The husky female voice jarred my thoughts. She wore orange tights, a yellow leather skirt, black tube top, and in deference to the cold night and the intermittent drizzle, a Wilson High School letter jacket. In the tint of the low-pressure sodium lights she looked jaundiced. I wanted to wash the makeup from her face. “Not much in a party mood.”
“How about we go somewhere quiet and do nasty things to get over these bad times?” She came up to me and touched my chest. The human contact felt good.
“Not much into nasty things.”
“You’re tense, baby. Maybe we could do something to relieve those pressures.”
I looked into her face. It hadn’t seen thirty any time recently. “Maybe the letter jacket was a gift from an admirer,” I thought. “Maybe it’s her son’s.”
“My Cavalier’s in the shop; that’s why I’m tense. I’ve got no cash left for carnal pleasures.”
“Screw you,” she spat as she walked away. “Hey, good looking,” she shouted to a passing motorist, “looking for a party?”
I was almost home when I saw someone walking down Fourth Street. Her pale dress was pressed against her razor thin body, soaked as if she had been standing all night in the drizzling rain. She wore no coat. She was giving the finger to some guys in a low rider driving by. She heard my footsteps and turned to face me. “Hey, mister, looking for a party girl?”
Her long black hair hung like strings on her shoulder. She was shivering. Before I could stop myself, I said, “Yes.”
I said it so tentatively I wasn’t sure she had heard me. Fifteen seconds elapsed between vague recognition and mutual realization. Context is so much a part of knowing someone. “Mr. Mikoska?” she asked.
“Lorraine?”
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m walking home,” I told her, skipping the facts that it was after midnight; I was drunk; and I’d just propositioned her.
Another car drove by, an old Mercedes convertible. It slowed as the white-haired driver leaned to get a better look at Lorraine.
“I guess you know what I’m doing,” she said. I nodded. “It kinda sucks.”
“You dropped out of school to do this?” That didn’t come out the way I’d intended it. “I mean, I thought things were working out.”
“My boyfriend, Jimmy, left me to work in Chicago. Mom said he was a scumbag, but I didn’t listen. I stole some money from Wilt, my stepdad, and hopped a Trailways. When I phoned Jimmy from the bus station, he called me a stupid bitch for not hitching. He said with a body like mine, I could get a ride anywhere I wanted. To prove it to me, he sent a ‘friend’ to pick me up at the station. The friend told me cab fare to Jimmy’s place was a blowjob. Within a week I was doing his buddies for spending money. Then I was out on the street turning tricks to pay my rent. That’s where Mom and the juvie cops found me.”
“There were rumors about that at school.”
“Figures. Those assholes. I dropped out before they could push me out. Those country clubbers never worked for a dime in their lives.”
“No chance you could go straight?”
“I got fired at Safeway when I ran off. When I got back, I found a new job at Super Value, but somebody told the manager’s wife what I did on the side. When Mom caught me stealing money from Wilt again, she threw me out. ‘Good men are hard to find,’ she said. Now I’m sharing an apartment with Mattie Heinz above the Grim Artist Tattoo Parlor. Mattie wants two-hundred bucks for rent and fifty for groceries and cigs. She loaned me working clothes . . .. This is just temporary. It’s not a career or anything.”
A black BMW pulled up to the curb and two large blond men in their mid-twenties emerged. “What’s happening here?”
“Just reviewing the menu,” Lorraine told them.
“Don’t look like this fellow got the spare change for an appetizer.”
I put on my best stupid grin. “It’s payday. I’m ready to party.”
The one in the black trench coat grabbed Lorraine’s arm. “Old man, this is prime chicken right here. We’ve got plans for her ass. That’s why we came looking for little Jewel Box here.” He grabbed a handful of her hair. “Looks like we got to get her dried off first.”
I moved toward them. “I’d pay for the rest of the night.”
“That’s $400 Old Man.”
“Shit, $400,” Lorraine shouted at them. “Does he look like he’s got $400?”
“I was hoping for a senior citizen discount.” I reached for my billfold. “I’m concerned she might be underage.”
The one in the blue slicker stepped in. “She’s a fine age, old man. Got an I.D. says she’s nineteen. You save your money tonight. Tuesdays are discount days.” They began walking toward the door with Lorraine between them.
She looked back at me as they stuffed her into the car. “Sorry, old man,” she said. “Maybe another night we’ll get lucky.” Then Lorraine was gone, and I was still four blocks from home.
