“Don’t never matter anyway. I got shit for luck and misery’s my best frriieenndd.”
Alonzo Smith stopped sifting among the green garbage bins located behind the Egyptian Casino just off from Las Vegas Avenue. He put his hand on his chest, one dirty foot on an old cardboard box, Sinatra-like, then sang the last phrase, again, of his newest lyrics. He listened intently as the melody echoed throughout the small, hot alley. His smile evolved into something more, and he laughed.
“I still got it, baby, still got it,” he said out loud, bowing to an unseen crowd who didn’t seem to mind the stench—his and the alley’s.
Removing his foot from the box, he moved slowly to the next bin. His voice had changed over the last few years, but he knew good music when he heard it, whether he was drunk, stoned, or otherwise. He could still carry a tune better than most and, back in his day, during his fifteen minutes of fame, no one had written better lyrics. He wrote those moving love songs with sexy, steamy, get-laid lyrics that made peoples’ temperatures rise as their imaginations took over.
Once, all of those years ago, he’d had the gold records to prove it. Motown. LA. New York. You name the city; they’d all been his oyster. And he could write the other stuff too. He’d written so many jingles that he’d forgotten the exact amount. Never mind a couple of those movie themes.
“You were the best, baby, the best,” he whispered.
Looking down at his dirty hands and tattered clothing, he slowly waggled his head. That wasn’t all he’d forgotten was it? She wasn’t easy to erase from his tortured mind. Never would be.
It didn’t happen often these days. The lucid, introspective moments of recollection reared ugly heads when their ghosts wanted to remind him of his sins.
He felt his angst rise.
These unexpected spells cast a peek into the past that was bittersweet. His successes, the money, the cars, the houses—those were pleasant things. Nothing matched her, however. How she cared. How she loved. How she lived. Then she was gone. All because of him.
His heart pounded in his chest.
All because of him.
Well, that was the true apparition that sent him back to his own tiny world, wasn’t it?
He closed his eyes and waited for the page to turn so that he could go back to the world that always gave him sanctuary. He opened his eyes. Alonzo was still in the wrong reality.
Then he hit himself in the head with a quick right. Nothing. He was still of sound mind, her lovely face dancing in his brain so vividly that the tears came, again. His quiet cry turned into sobs. She was so beautiful, so trusting, then she was gone, and all because he wouldn’t play ball with a couple of Vegas hoods.
Quickly fumbling through his deep pockets, he found his remedy of choice and drank a fourth of the pint of whisky in one gulp. Sniffing the bottle, he repeated the long swig. The smell and the incessant burn combined to form his version of comfort food. It worked.
A few moments later, the real world again a distant shadow, he rummaged around the remaining garbage bins, impervious to the increasing stench that would have driven most others to a safer haven. Any thoughts of his past life were finally and completely obliterated.
After tossing away a large section of cardboard, he stopped, tilted his head, and grinned. A shoe. Not just any shoe but a black, patent-leather, designer shoe was sticking straight up, looking like his size, at least close enough, and waiting for him to pluck it from its dicey prison. He bent closer and felt his pulse shift to fourth gear. The mate for his new treasure was right next to it, albeit buried a little deeper.
“Score! It’s my lucky day, and I gotta say, I did it my waayy,” he crooned, laughing at his good fortune.
Clutching the first shoe, he yanked, fully expecting it to come free. It didn’t. He scowled and then gave it another yank. It moved sideways, not up, and he fell back, catching himself with his hands.
“You som’bitches are coming with me, like it or not,” he yelled.
Alonzo spit on his hands, grabbed the shoe again, and yanked with all of his might. Again he ended up on his backside, but, this time, the black treasure came free. He stared at the shoe in his grasp, but that wasn’t the only thing that came out from the rubble in the bin.
At first, he believed the leg belonged to a mannequin, but the dried blood and the rancid odor emanating from the human foot still wedged within the shoe told him otherwise.
The dark hairs standing straight out from the foot, just under the straight cut that had separated it from the man’s leg, held Alonzo paralyzed.
But only for a small morsel of time.
What was left of his sanity demanded a whole new reaction.
Tossing the limb from hell aside, he scrambled out of the bin.
Alonzo Smith reached the hot asphalt and tore his shirt with both hands, screaming for Satan to leave him alone.