SOME GUY WITH an Iron Maiden tattoo vomited in our direction as Coco led me past all the new condominiums and few remaining flophouses left on the Bowery. We passed the shelter for homeless men, the lobster place with singing waitresses, putrid Phebe’s, and walked through the grimy doorway of CBGB’s, the punk palace. The people inside were loud and overwhelmingly ugly. Each one had processed their hair into such an advanced state of artificiality that they deprived everyone else close to them of touching it soft or smelling it sweet. It was teased up, stiffed into spikes, shaved, extended, and always dyed, in a procedure utterly boring and out of date. Didn’t they know that Sid Vicious was the stuff of Hollywood movies and they too would soon be petrified in their hard-core status if they didn’t get hip to a new thing real soon?
Everywhere there were kids and the kids were making deals, or imitating what they saw as the rough-and-tumble world of deal-making. Deals for bands, for gigs, for dope and sex. Deals that were nothing but big talk and small return. Deals because there was nothing else to talk about and the music was usually too loud to discuss anything substantial.
Also too many boys. Dirty boys trying to look mean, in training not to give a shit. Lots of boys in black boots, not a single one was pretty. The girls who hung onto them disappeared, but the girls who came in with each other were cute, chubby fourteen-year-olds with fake IDs, one shock of dyed black hair hanging over one eye. They were young enough to still be giggling from behind one cupped hand. Just like I used to do.
“See that girl?” said the sceevy boy standing next to his greasy friend. “She’s an awesome fuck.”
Then the band blasted again.
CBGB’s walls were covered with remnants of torn-off posters. Thousands of little corners still Scotch-taped to the wall, and then some larger scraps advertising the Nihilistics, False Prophets, and the Spineless Yesmen. The air-conditioning worked.
Napalm was the band that afternoon. They all had the same haircut, shaved frontal lobes with backside shags that made them look like moles coming up through Astroturf. Their other common denominator was big, dirty fingernails that no woman should ever let near her body. Three of them had old underwear sticking out of the backs of their pants, which had been bought at a fancy Saint Mark’s Place boutique years earlier when they were still NYU students. Now, though, the asses sagged, the colors faded, and their entire wardrobes were stained from Stromboli’s pizza and puking. Phone numbers scribbled on torn Marlboro packs, learning how to smoke and drink, not enough love, just rock-and-roll bands with no personality, filled that room that afternoon. Two rums for me and then an oblivion of noise.
Coco and I stumbled out of there both drunk, since Coco was susceptible to influence and my influence was a bad one.
“Hey Coke, do you mind if I call you Coke?”
“Only if you let me call you asshole.”
“Listen, Coco, there’s Daniel, Beatriz’s son.”
“Who?” “My friend’s son Daniel.”
He was leaning against a car, looking as cool as a sweating teenager can look at four in the afternoon, deep in conversation with some white guy with dyed black hair.
“That’s no Daniel,” Coco said, leaning on my arm a little bit. It was one thing to be drunk in the air-conditioning, but out there in the sun it really took its toll.
“That’s Juan Colon. Last year he was Juan Colon, at any rate. This year he changed his name to Johnny. He’s from PR.”
“That’s no Juan Colon, I’m telling you.” I really wanted a cigarette and started feeling up all my pockets and casing the crowd for a good person to grub from. “His name is Daniel Piazzola. He’s from Argentina.”
“No, man.” Coco was looking for cigarettes too and pulled out two crumpled Virginia Slims from the bottom of her bag. “I know him. He’s from PR.”
Now we had to find matches.
“Excuse me, do you have a light?” I asked some gross shithead.
“Coco, talk to him in Spanish and listen to his accent. Then you’ll know where he’s from.”
“What? Are you crazy? I don’t speak Spanish. One, two, three cocksucker. That’s all I know. Let’s go to your house and smoke some herb.”
But I had to talk to him. Johnny Colon, what a liar. Well, he came by it honestly, that’s for sure. Charlotte and Beatriz created a legacy of lies and deception combined with certain elements of beauty that couldn’t easily be discounted. But the closer I got to this gawky boy leaning against a car, the more clearly I could see the packages of neatly folded aluminum foil, wrapped in a rubber band. I saw how gracefully he hid them in the palm of one hand, making change with the other and always watching out.
“Daniel?”
“What do you want, C or D?”
“Remember me? I listened to your ‘tumor’ record. I’ve been in your house.”
“Yeah? What for?”
It was really hot now, the car-hood metal was sizzling but I sat on it anyway because the pain kept me awake and kept my eyes glued to Daniel’s.
“I knew Marianne too,” I said, suddenly remembering the words of Urgie’s sick bartender. “Her spic boyfriend. She said you used to watch out for her once in a while, even going to New Jersey some late nights.”
I was very still while he made small movements with great agility and grace, the kind that can be used for baseball or sex or selling drugs on the hot cement.
“I liked her, you know, but she was a baby. She couldn’t keep her opinions to herself and got mixed up in everybody’s business.”
“Someone told me she was a junkie,” I said. “But I didn’t think so.”
“Who said that? Bullshit. Bullshit. Marianne never used except on holidays. But that’s like everybody. Even the president does that.”
“So what did she need big money for then?”
“She liked to eat in restaurants. She liked to buy new shoes at Manic Panic and get her hair done at Hair Space. She always bought the most expensive shampoo. She got messed up in too many deep things because she was a kid and never figured out who to say no to. Okay? Now leave me the hell alone.”
I had to act quickly because my time was running out on Daniel’s meter. He started to shrug his shoulders a little too much, like he really was tough and tough guys don’t have time for too many questions.
“Charlotte said she was a junkie. It was Charlotte who told me that. I figured she should know.”
Suddenly everything changed. Daniel stopped talking out of the corner of his mouth. He stopped making change swiftly with his right hand. He stopped acting like a man when he was only a boy.
“That’s bullshit, man. You can’t believe a word that bitch says. Let me tell you something. If anyone’s a dope fiend around here, it’s Charlotte. When this whole thing happened, the first thing I thought of was that Charlotte got Marianne more high than she could handle and ended up dumping her in the water because she was too stoned to think of what else to do. That Charlotte is a real cunt. Don’t believe anything she tells you. Okay, okay, you happy now?”
He jumped off the car with a jerk, as though I had upset him so thoroughly he couldn’t stand to be in a place where I had just been. He started walking, troubled and slow, around the parking meter, easing back into doing business. Every now and then he twitched, eventually loping over to a third car, where he hitched his little ass up on the hood again and made change.
Of course it was Charlotte. How could I have been so blind? But never would Charlotte be part of something so sloppy and accidental as Daniel’s scenario. I remembered those giant hands that would fit so perfectly around Punkette’s neck. Those hands were the size of taxicabs. First they would stroke Punkette’s hair, one hand covering her entire skull. Then they would caress her little breasts and slide between her legs, sloshing around in her wetness. And in that quiet, out-of-breath moment, right after she came, Punkette would look up, flushed and grateful, to see Charlotte’s hands, with the same ease, crawl up her neck and break it without any effort at all. Without a thought.