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"I was travelling with Irene Kelly and her was a sporting woman. In Butte, state of Montany, her got the coke horrors and run through the hotel screaming Chinese coppers chase her with meat cleavers. I knew this cop in Chi sniff coke used to come in form of cry- stals, blue crystals. So her go nuts and start screaming the Federals is after him and run down this alley and stick his head in the garbage can. And I said, 'What you think you are doing? and her say, 'Get away or I shoot you! I got myself led good!' When the roll is called up yonder we'll be there, right?" Joe looked at the Sailor and spread his hands in the junky shrug. The Sailor spoke in his feeling voice that reassembles in your head, spelling out the words with cold fingers: "Your connection is broken, kid." The boy shied. His street-boy face, torn with black scars of junk, retained a wild, broken innocence; shy animals peering out through grey arabesques of terror. "I don't dig you, Jack." The Sailor leapt into sharp, junky focus. He turned back his coat lapel, showing a brass hypo needle covered with mold and verdigris. "Retired for the good of the service.... Sit down and have a blueberry crumb pie on the expense account. Your monkey loves it.... Make his coat glossy." The boy felt a touch on his arm across eight feet of morning lunch room. He was suddenly siphoned into the booth, landing with an inaudible shlup. He looked into the Sailor's eyes, a green universe stirred by cold black currents. "You are agent, mister?" "I prefer the word... vector." His sounding laughter vibrated through the boy's substance. "You holding, man? I got the bread...." "I don't want your money, Honey: I want your Time." "I don't dig." "You want fix? You want straight? You wanta, nooood?" The Sailor cradled something pink and vibrated out of focus. "Yeah." "We'll take the Independent. Got their own special heat, don't carry guns only saps. I recall, me and the Fag fell once in Queen's Plaza. Stay away from Queen's Plaza, son... evil spot... fuzz haunted. Too many levels. Heat Hares out from the broom closet high on ammonia like burning lions... fall on poor old lush worker, scare her veins right down to the bone. Her skin pop a week or do that five-twenty-nine kick handed out free and gratis by NYC to jostling junkies.... So Fag, Beagle, Irish, Sailor beware! Look down, look down along that line before you travel there. |
