George Pelecanos - The Turnaround

Pete killed his Schlitz and tossed the can over the seat. It hit the other ones they had drained that day, now in a heap on the floorboard, and made a dull sound.

“I need cigarettes,” said Billy.

“Pull into the Seven-Ereven,” said Pete, like he was a Chinese trying to talk American.

They parked and got out of the car. They wore 501 straight-leg Levi’s, rolled up at the cuffs, and pocket T-shirts. Pete wore Adidas Superstars, and Billy sported a pair of denim Hanover wedges. Alex wore his Chucks. The boys weren’t stylish, but they had down-county style.

The store was not a 7-Eleven, but it had been one for a time, and the three boys still identified it as such. Now run by a family of Asians, its primary offerings were beer and wine. As the boys entered, Climax’s “Precious and Few” played through a cheap sound system from behind the counter. One of the Asians was singing along softly, and when he came to “precious,” he sang “pwecious.” When Alex heard this he chuckled. He found these things funny when he was high. Alex went to the candy aisle and stared at its display.

Pete and Billy had a brief conversation that ended with a bit of laughter. Then Pete went to a spinning rack and tried on a hat with a hooked-bass patch stitched on its front while Billy bought cigarettes, Hostess cherry pies, and beer. They never carded Billy here or anywhere else. He looked like a man.

Outside, Billy broke the cellophane on a hardpack of Marlboro Reds, tore out the foil, and extracted a cigarette. He fired it up with a Zippo lighter that had an eight ball inlaid on it. He had lifted it at the Cue Club after some greaser had left it lying on a rail.

“What do you girls wanna do now?” said Pete.

They were standing by the car in the direct sun. The heat was coming up in waves off the sidewalk. Billy held the bag of beer and cherry pies under his arm.

“Drink this brew before it gets too hot to drink it,” said Billy.

“Who don’t know that?” said Alex.

Pete watched Billy smoke. Pete didn’t use cigarettes himself. His father said his friends came from uneducated people and that was why they had stupid habits. Pete took mild offense at this and expressed it vocally, but he felt in his heart that his father was right.

“Y’all ready to get torched?” said Billy.

Alex shrugged a Why not? There was nothing to do on this Saturday afternoon but get higher than they were now.

Billy finished smoking. He flicked his cigarette out into the parking lot with practiced nonchalance.

“Let’s roll, Clitoris,” said Pete to Billy Cachoris.

They got back into the Ford.

They drank six more beers and smoked another joint of Colombian, scored that morning, and got stoned and reckless behind the alcohol they had been pouring on empty stomachs. “Tumbling Dice” was finishing up on the radio, and Pete had cranked it up. In front, Billy and Pete were heatedly discussing the Fourth of July Stones concert, which had included good bud, a party ball of sour mash whiskey, and a girl in a halter top.

“God made halters,” said Billy, “so blind guys can grab tit.”

“Jenny Maloney,” said Pete, naming the pom-pom girl at their high school whom the boys called the Hole. “She’s got this one halter top, boy…”

Alex remembered the girl in the halter top and Peanut jeans who had danced in front of him during the concert. He could recall the details of the entire day. He, Billy, and Pete had gone down to RFK Stadium on the morning of the Fourth in the Whitten family Oldsmobile and parked in the main lot, where the Dead and the Who were blasting from the open windows of cars and vans. They had brought sandwiches, packed by Alex’s mom, and a dude in a wheelchair traded them a small piece of hash for a ham-and-Swiss. They smoked it, got up immediately, and went to join the crowds moving toward the venue. When the gates opened, the expected chaotic surge ensued, caused by the festival seating policy, which had thousands trying to enter the stadium at once. Coolers holding bottles of beer and liquor were being smashed by security guards, and at one point Alex was pinned against a chain-link fence, only to be rescued by Billy, who yelled, “Jerry Kramer!” with joy as he body-blocked a big man to the ground and set Alex free. Alex, Billy, and Pete found seats behind the dugout, where Alex had sat with his father at baseball games before the Nats left town, and commenced smoking one of the many joints they had rolled that morning with Top papers. Martha Reeves and the Vandellas came on first, played “Dancing in the Street,” and when they sang the phrase “Baltimore and D.C.,” the audience lit up. The girl in the halter top danced before them, her hips alive, and the boys imagined her in the act, all of them transfixed. Stevie Wonder appeared next, oddly opening with “Rockin’ Robin,” a hit for Michael Jackson earlier that year, and then got the throngs going when he moved into his own material. During “Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours),” a handler came out and turned Stevie around, as he was inadvertently singing to the empty, obstructed-view portion of the stands. After a dead period during which people got more inebriated, more unruly, and more high, the Stones walked onto the stage, and Mick Jagger, cocaine skinny in a white jumpsuit and red silk scarf, shouted, “Hello, campers!” launching the band into “Brown Sugar.” Forty thousand were up on their feet, fueled by alcohol, speed, acid, pot, and youth. A police officer twirled his nightstick in unison with the rhythm section. The band played cuts from Exile on Main Street, which had recently been released. Mick Taylor’s guitar solo on “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” was epic. Jagger pranced, pirouetted, and whipped the stage with a leather belt during “Midnight Rambler.” Jagger toasted the crowd with a bottle of Jack, saying, “I drink to your independence.” Tear gas drifted in from police action outside the stadium. The boys’ eyes burned, but they didn’t care. Girls who tried to climb onstage were thrown off or hauled away by security and had their hands cut by nails driven up through the stage’s edge. Near the end of the concert, during a violent “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” the houselights were turned on, and the smoke in the air was industrial as it moved up into the night sky. Alex could not remember being happier. He had never experienced anything like this and doubted that anything in his life would ever top it.

“The Hole must wear a halter top down there, too,” said Billy. “ ’Cause she likes to allow that easy access.”

“For real,” said Pete.

Billy and Pete were still talking about Jenny Maloney. Alex wondered how long they had been discussing her. He wondered if he had blacked out.

“I know you had your fingers in it,” said Billy, setting Pete up.

“I had my arm in it, man,” said Pete. “In the stairwell up at the HoJo hotel? Her parents were giving her a sweet sixteen party and shit. While they were passing out party favors, me and Jenny were up there on the landing, making out, and she put one foot up on this step and took my hand and kinda guided it up there. I didn’t need no petroleum jelly, either, no lie…”

As Pete went on, Alex Pappas tuned him out. Billy and Pete always sat together up front, and at some point when they were partying, they forgot he was in the car. He didn’t mind. The things they said when they were high, he had heard them all before. Pete, elbow deep in Jenny Maloney’s pussy at her sweet sixteen party, in the stairwell of the HoJo hotel up in Wheaton while her parents passed out birthday hats in the rented room… no shit, he knew it by heart.

Alex looked out the window. The world outside was tilted a bit and moving, and he blinked to stop the spin. He could feel the sweat dripping down his chest under his T. They were at the red light at the Boulevard. They were in the middle lane, which meant straight only. He had never been “over there” to Heathrow Heights, and as far as he knew, neither had his friends. He vaguely wondered why Billy was in this lane. He remembered the conversation between Billy and Pete the night before, and he thought: Now Billy is going to show us that he is not afraid.