Thomas Pynchon - Bleeding Edge

“Let’s see, that leaves what… dope dealer?”

“Shh-shh!” grabbing her arm. For as it turns out, March’s ex-husband Sid has in fact been running substances in and out of the little marina up at Tubby Hook, at the river end of Dyckman Street, and Igor here it seems is one of his clients. “I emphasize ‘running,’ March explains. “Sid, whatever the package might be, he’s just the deliveryperson, never likes to look inside.”

“Because inside this package he doesn’t look in…?”

Well, for Igor it’s methcathinone, also known as bathtub speed, “The bathtub in this case being, my guess is it’s over in Jersey.”

“Sid always has good product,” Igor nods, “not this cheap kitchen-stove Latvian shnyaga which is pink from permanganate they don’t get rid of, before long you are deeply fucked up, like you don’t walk right, you shake? Latvian dzhef, do me a favor, Maxine! don’t go near it, it ain’t dzhef! it’s govno! ”

“I’ll try and remember.”

“You had breakfast? We got ice cream here, what kind you like?”

Maxine notices a sizable freezer under the bar. “Thanks, little early in the day.”

“No, no, it’s real ice cream,” Igor explains. “Russian ice cream. Not this Euromarket food-police shit.”

“High butterfat content,” March translates. “Soviet-era nostalgia, basically.”

“Fucking Nestlé,” Igor rooting through the freezer. “Fucking unsaturated vegetable oils. Hippie shit. Corrupting entire generation. I have arrangements, fly this in once a month on refrigerator plane to Kennedy. OK, so we got Ice-Fili here, Ramzai, also Inmarko, from Novosibirsk, very awesome morozhenoye , Metelitsa, Talosto… today, for you, on special, hazelnut, chocolate chips, vishnya, which is sour cherry…”

“Can I maybe just take some for later?”

She ends up with a number of half-kilo Family Packs in an assortment of flavors.

“Thanks, Igor, this all seems to be here,” March stashing the currency in her purse. She’s planning to go uptown tonight to meet Sid and pick up his delivery for Igor. “You ought to come along, Maxi. Just a simple pickup, come on, it’ll be fun.”

“My grasp of the drug laws is a little shaky, March, but last time I checked, this is Criminal Sale of a Controlled Substance.”

“Yes, but it’s also Sid. A complex situation.”

“A B felony. You and your ex—I gather you’re still… close?”

“Don’t leer, Maxi, it causes wrinkles,” climbing out of the ZiL, waiting for Maxine. “Remember to count what’s in your Fairway bag, there.”

“Why, when I don’t even know how much it’s supposed to be to begin with, see what I’m saying.”

There’s a cart with coffee and bagels on the corner. It’s warm today, they find a stoop to sit on and take a coffee break.

“Igor says you saved them a shitload of money.”

“You think that ‘them’ includes Igor himself?”

“He’d be too embarrassed to tell anybody. What was going on?”

“Some kind of pyramid racket.”

“Oh. Something a little different.”

“You mean for Igor? like he has some history with—”

“No, I meant late capitalism is a pyramid racket on a global scale, the kind of pyramid you do human sacrifices up on top of, meantime getting the suckers to believe it’s all gonna go on forever.”

“Too heavy-duty for me, even the scale Igor’s on makes me nervous. I’m more comfortable with people who hang around at ATMs, that level.”

“So later for the gritty street drama, come on uptown for some high fantasy, these Dominican guys, you know?”

“Hmmm. I could manage some old-school merengue maybe.”

MARCH IS MEETING SIDat Chuy’s Hideaway, a dance club near Vermilyea. The minute they step off the subway, which up here runs elevated high over the neighborhood, they can hear music. They go sashaying more than schlepping downstairs to the street, where salsa pulses deeply from the stereo systems of double-parked Caprices and Escalades, from bars, from shoulder-mounted boom boxes. Teenagers knock each other around good-naturedly. Sidewalks are busy, fruit stands open, arrays of mangoes and star fruit, ice-cream carts on the corners doing late business.

At Chuy’s Hideaway behind a modest storefront, they find a deep lounge, bright, loud, violent, that seems to run all the way through to the next block. Girls in very high spike heels and shorts shorter than a doper’s memory are gliding around with low-buttoned young men in gold chains and narrowbrim hats. Weedsmoke inflects the air. Folks are drinking rum and Cokes, Presidente beer, Brugal Papa Dobles. Deejay activities alternate with live local bachata groups, a bright, twangly mandolin/bottleneck sound, an impossible-not-to-want-to-dance-to beat.

March is in a loose red dress and eyelashes longer than Maxine recalls, a sort of Irish Celia Cruz, with her hair all the way down. They know her at the door. Maxine inhales deeply, relaxes into sidekick mode.

The floor is crowded, and March without hesitating disappears onto it. Some possibly underaged cupcake who says his name is Pingo appears from nowhere, grabs Maxine in a courtly way, and dances off with her. At first she tries to fake it with what she can remember from the old Paradise Garage, but soon enough moves begin to drift back as she is taken into the beat…

Partners come and go in amiable rotation. Every now and then in the ladies’ room, Maxine will find March regarding herself in the mirror with less than dismay. “Who sez Anglo chicks can’t shake it?”

“Trick question, right?”

Sid shows up late, holding a Presidente longneck, avuncular, one of those bristling military haircuts, far from Maxine’s admittedly warped image of a drug runner.

“Don’t keep me waiting or anything,” March beaming vexedly.

“Thought you’d need the extra time to score, angel.”

“I don’t notice Sequin anyplace. At the library or something, working on a book report?”

The group on the stand is playing “Cuando Volverás.” Sid pulls Maxine to her feet and starts in with a bachata modified for reduced floor space, quietly singing the hook. “And when I lift your outside hand, it means we’re gonna twirl, just remember go all the way around so you end up facing me.”

“On this floor? twirls, you’ll need a permit. Oh, Sid,” she inquires politely a couple-three bars later, “are you by any chance hitting on me?”

“Who wouldn’t?” Sid gallantly, “though you shouldn’t rule out trying to piss off the ex.”

Sid is a veteran of Studio 54, worked as a toilet attendant, got out on the floor during breaks, at shift’s end gathered up $100 bills forgotten by patrons who’d been rolling them up all night to snort cocaine through, as many as he could get to before the rest of the staff, though he himself preferred to use the recessed filter on a Parliament cigarette as a sort of disposable spoon.

They don’t quite close the joint up, but it’s pretty late by the time they get out on Dyckman and down to the little Tubby Hook marina. Sid leads March and Maxine out to a low, 28-foot runabout with a triple cockpit, Art Deco sleek and all wood in different shades. “Maybe it’s sexist,” sez Maxine, “but I really have to wolf-whistle here.”

Sid introduces them. “It’s a 1937 Gar Wood, 200 horses, shakedown cruises on Lake George, honorable history of outrunning pursuit at every level…”

March hands over Igor’s money, Sid produces an authentically distressed teenage backpack from the bilges.

“Can I drop you ladies anyplace?”

“Seventy-ninth Street marina,” sez March, “and step on it.”