Michael Crichton - Dealing or The Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues

His place looked as though no one had ever lived there, full of broken furniture and old newspapers. The guy was on the phone a long time, so after a while I went into the can to take a leak. I’d just gotten it out when he popped his head in the door. His eyes lit up when he saw me and then he casually sauntered in and started brushing his teeth. I didn’t have the faintest idea what was going down, so I continued about my business. Suddenly he pops his head up from the bowl and asks me if I’ve ever been blown. I didn’t think so, I replied. Well, he demanded, wouldn’t I like to try it out now? I mean, after all, if I’d never tried it, I didn’t have the slightest idea what I was missing. I said No thanks, I didn’t want to try. The whole scene had suddenly become bizarrely comic, as I’d realized why he was brushing his teeth. The dude was being polite. He was letting me know that, hygienically at least, he wasn’t a dirty old man.

And he wasn’t about to give up so easily, either. Was I sure I didn’t want to try it out? Honest-to-goodness sure? ’Cause he’d noticed—no harm in looking, see—he’d noticed that I wasn’t circumscribed, and did I know how much more sensitive that made me? Circumcised, I thought he meant. Circumscribed, circumshmibed, what difference did it make—didn’t I want to try?

No, sorry, I didn’t, and maybe I’d just better be going, if he had finished making his phone calls. And then all of a sudden he was blocking the door, and I was realizing that he wasn’t so old, and that he was pretty big to boot. So I picked up the nearest thing at hand, which was a plumber’s helper, and asked him if he was going to get out of the way, feeling ridiculous even as I did so. Knock the fag around in his own can with his own plumber’s helper. It was too much. Suddenly I started to laugh. I couldn’t believe it, but I laughed and laughed and laughed, until I dropped the plumber’s helper; and I kept laughing long after he’d shaken his head in dumb amazement and walked out.

By the time I stopped laughing he’d brought the car around front, and was all ready to drive me back to the highway. On the way he suddenly started rapping. Seemed the dude was married, had a few kids, held down a regular job. But he just couldn’t have enough of that old Get you, Gertrude, so he’d rented the second house for practically nothing, and he went out every night picking up hitchhikers. I asked him how he did. He said that now and then he found himself a goodie, but usually they were like me. You mean No Go, I said. Well, at first, he said, but then he’d hassle them in the can, and they’d get tough and knock him around. It suddenly dawned on me that this was the whole point of that scene. They’d knock him around, and then he’d cry and apologize, and then they’d be sorry, and then half the time, it turned out, they’d feel so bad they’d wind up letting him work them over.

He was about to go on when I asked him why he did things that way. I meant that if he was a fag, why not be one full-time? Why screw around working the night shift when you’ve got the whole day, too. But he didn’t understand me that way, and what came back was a jumbled, confused defense of his wife, and the kids, and his place in the community.

Why didn’t he just split? I kept asking. Oh no, was all he’d say. He couldn’t do that. After all, that’d been his life for twenty years. To quit now would be ridiculous, totally ridiculous. Be a fag? Of course not. Nobody would ever buy shoes from him again. His wife would probably leave him. The kids would look at him funny.

I began to see things differently after that. I began to notice how much people treasured their solidity, their immobility. It made everything safe. And what I noticed now, on my third shot of John’s J & B, was that I was into the same riff. I was a student—that was my gig—and even though I put it down, I was completely into ripping it off for all it was worth. I didn’t mind getting busted in Berkeley, because there I was just another dude. But to have Sukie busted on my turf, in my town, where I was cool—well, that just didn’t make it. It didn’t make it at all, and instead of trying to do something about it I just sat around and waited for somebody to bail me out.

I started over to grab another hit of J & B, paused, and sat down. It was up to me now, as it had always been. I simply hadn’t wanted to look it in the face. If Sukie was still in jail at the arraignment, she’d be up the river; and even if I got her out before then, there was still a chance that she’d go up unless I got her a lawyer as well. I had to do something.

So I dialed O’Leary’s office and demanded to speak to someone, anyone. But I only got a half-witted chick on answering service, who informed me that it was Saturday and everyone was home. Would I please call back Monday? How about home phones, I wanted to know. Well, that depended. Was I a client already? Or was I simply seeking information? No, she was sorry, if I wasn’t already a client she wasn’t permitted to give me any home phones. Lawyers had to sleep, just like everyone else. The office would be open on Monday at nine.

Thank you, bitch. What next? I called up all the bail bondsmen I could find in the book. They had not gone home—they did a thriving business on Saturday night, that much was obvious. But no, they wouldn’t accept a stereo as collateral on a ten-thousand-dollar bond, it wouldn’t be worth it to them, and anyway they’d been getting too many stolen goods for collateral lately. They were taking only large items they could be sure of, like cars, these days. Click.

I poured myself another Scotch, got thoroughly sloshed, and turned on the television to catch the evening news. As it came on, Herbie showed up; he was on his way to dinner and was looking for company. I said I wasn’t hungry but offered him a drink, and he sat down to watch the news with me.

After the usual Vietnam-Central-American-coup-Middle-East-retaliation-domestic-upheaval reports, they came to the local news. And to Susan Blake, a nineteen-year-old resident of San Francisco, California, arrested today at Logan Airport on charges of possession of marijuana. Her suitcase was found to contain forty pounds of marijuana. She will be arraigned Monday. Elsewhere in the city…

“Far out,” Herbie said.

“Yeah,” I said.

He laughed. “Well,” he said, nodding to the TV, “you don’t have to take it personally, just because somebody gets busted.”

I looked over at him. “Herbie,” I said, “that’s my chick.”

There was a long pause while Herbie thought that one over, and I thought that one over. Then Herbie said again, “Far out.”

I didn’t say anything.

“What’re you going to do?”

I shook my head. “I’ve got to get bail for her. I’ve got to get her out of there.”

“That means money,” Herbie said.

“Yeah.” I got up, a little unsteadily, and went into the bedroom to get some cigarettes. When I came out, Herbie was still there, staring at me with a quizzical look on his face.

“How are you going to do it?”

I shrugged. “Your bet’s as good as mine.”

Herbie laughed. “In other words,” he said, “you don’t have any idea.”

I didn’t laugh. Herbie was right.

LATER THAT NIGHT IT BEGAN to rain, cold, streaky splatterings against the window, as I stared out at the courtyard. I was wrecked but I was still trying to think of something to do for Sukie. I had been in tight places before, especially when I’d been doing my own dealing. One time in Berkeley a good friend of mine had been busted, busted so badly that if I hadn’t come up with some bread for a lawyer he would have done a couple of years. But getting that bread had been something else—something I just wasn’t up for, this time around.