12

I was back on the porch daydreaming about Jennifer and waiting for Jamal to arrive when my cell phone rang. It was Rooster and it sounded like he had two barrels of caffeine pumping through his veins. He was talking two miles a minute, one mile faster than how I was used to hearing him speak and he seemed to be teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown. I assumed it was due to my planned departure.

“Hey, Babes,” he told me as the phone was pressed against my ear. “I just left work early to pick up my kids from school and you wouldn’t believe what I’m seeing. Every Moakley billboard I’m seeing is covered in graffiti, gang tags, and six-foot tall curse words. You can’t read any of the advertisements.”

“I know,” I said, welcoming Rocky as he appeared on the porch to sip from his water bowl. “I’ll tell you all about it later.”
“Tell me what exactly? Babes, you didn’t have something to do with this, did you?”
“It was an investment in the paper’s future.”
“Have you been abducted by aliens? I mean, I really don’t even know who you are anymore.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“You’ve turned into a complete nut job.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I told him as Rocky eagerly sniffed my empty hand, hoping to find it filled with peanuts.
“Well, don’t think we’re not going to talk about this Moakley thing later. I want the details of your fiendish plan because if I

“It wasn’t a secret, Rooster. I just didn’t want it to come back to you. I’ll tell you all about it later though. Right now I have to get going because I’m actually meeting the man responsible for the artwork you’ve seen. I need to pay him for a job well done.”

“Okay, but don’t forget about Jill. That’s still on like a carnival, so put on your best shoes.”
“Good-bye,” I said, hanging up the phone without letting Rooster get in another word. I was in no frame of mind to think about another woman because Jennifer was occupying all of my gray matter. I would have done anything to get out of my date with Jill, but I felt obligated to Rooster and preferred to keep him happy until I announced my official leave from the paper.
I slipped my cell phone into my pocket and ran into the house to grab a handful of peanuts. I returned to my seated position on the porch and proceeded to stuff Rocky’s cheeks with a late afternoon snack. He chose to save them for future feasting and ran off to bury them in his peanut graveyard.
Jamal arrived with two of his associates a few moments later. He was wearing a baggy Red Sox shirt, oversized shorts that hung to his ankles, and a black doo rag tied over his head. He scanned the house from top to bottom and waved to his yes men to stay put by the sidewalk. He approached me cautiously, still unsure if he could trust me.
“This your house?” he asked.
“I don’t own it,” I said, standing and stretching. “I’m just renting.”
“What the fuck for?”
“Why the fuck not?”
“I’m not even sure you can classify this as a house, homey.”
“Eh, it is what it is,” I said. “Wanna head inside and take care of business?”
“Do it up.”
Jamal followed me inside as his urban soldiers waited for his return. He snickered at the furnishings of my living room and refused to sit, saying he wouldn’t put his ass on anything in the joint.
“So how did it go?” I asked.
“My boys delivered as promised,” he said with pride. “Now where’s my money?”
I walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door, pulling a rolled wad of cash from the produce drawer. I threw it to Jamal and he caught it with his right hand. He removed the rubber band from the cash, licked his fingertips, and began counting it to make sure it matched our previously agreed-upon amount.
“It’s all there,” I assured him. “Bonus and all.”
“Maybe so, but if it’s all the same to you, homey, I’d like to check for myself.”
“By all means.”
As Jamal continued to count, a cockroach sprinted out from a cracked floorboard and began climbing the wall. I reached for the Taser gun that Mikey had given me for protection and attempted to shock the insect into submission, but I missed by at least a foot on my first shot. Without hesitation, Jamal dug into his pants and pulled out a Glock 9mm. He took aim at the scurrying creature and fired, hitting the bug square in the back with a bullet. The cockroach exploded like a water balloon and the bullet lodged into the wall.
“Wow!” I said, shocked and genuinely surprised by his marksmanship. “That was one hell of a shot.”
“You want to kill a cockroach, you got to think like a cockroach.”
“I’ll have to remember that. So, are we good?”
“Yeah. We’re square. You ever got anymore business like this, you know where to find me.”
Jamal turned to leave and I inspected the bullet hole in the wall. He had initiative and was a leader, whether he knew it or not.
“I’m going to need you when the revolution comes Jamal.”
“What revolution?” he blurted out.
“Things keep going the way they are, the economy is going to crash and chaos is going to take over. The cities, the towns and the government are going to go bankrupt. All of the power is going to shift and it’s going to shift to the people in the trenches. People like you, Jamal. We’re going to need you.”
Something, if not all of what I said had bored underneath Jamal’s skin and he lit up like a furious Christmas tree.
“Get your white mother-fucker revolution out of my face! You fucking cracker-ass pasties are always using the black man to do your dirty work.”
Jamal stormed out of the house and I stood thinking about his words. He was obviously extremely intelligent and passionate. I knew it was only a matter of time before we became good friends.
After a few beers and a cold shower, I stepped back outside and noticed a small crowd had gathered in front of Jimmy’s house. At first I thought his latest dishwashing antics may have become a spectator sport, but then I saw two policemen and a stuffy man in a white lab coat step out into the open and I knew things were more serious than that.
“What’s going on?” I asked a man in a tattered brown bathrobe that I had never met before.
“There’s something green glowing in the guy’s grass over there,” he told me, pointing to a spot on Jimmy’s lawn that had been quarantined with police tape. “I think it’s a crop circle. We’re foolish to think we’re alone in this universe.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” I said as I stood on my tiptoes, doing my best to get a better view of the crap circle. “Any idea who the guy in the white coat is?”
“I heard the redheaded cop say he was with the Board of Health.”
“That’s not a good sign.”
“Nope, and he brought some kind of portable chemistry set with him too. I had one just like it when I was a kid.”
I parted the crowd and walked towards Jimmy’s driveway where Getman was in mid-discussion with an attractive female police officer. She took notes on a tiny pad as the Nazi-loving Getman spewed out his opinions on Jimmy.
“The other day I saw him hosing a glass in just about the same spot as that stuff that was found over there,” Getman squealed as if he was being interrogated himself. “He always struck me as an oddball.”
“Do you have any idea when your neighbor gets home?” the police woman asked Getman.
“Usually about this time actually,” Getman proclaimed as he checked his watch.
I stepped over to the officer and asked if I could have a word with her in private. Getman glared at me, suspicious of my motives, but I brushed him off and lead the on-duty beauty to an area in front of Mrs. Fazzino’s house where we could talk without any immediate interruption.
“Are you trying to find the person that caused this mess?” I asked her.
“That’s my job,” she said in a snippety tone. “Do you have any information on who did it?”
“I’m not one to ruffle feathers, but I think you may have just been speaking to the person responsible.”
“You got any proof?”
“I live a few houses down so I tend to see a lot of what goes on in front of my house. Getman, the guy you were just talking to, I’m not sure what he does for a living but from what I’ve seen, he has a workshop in the basement. There are constantly UPS shipments being made to his house and all of the boxes that get delivered there always have those biohazard stickers all over them. It’s had all of us neighbors a little worried.”
“And you’ve seen this?” she asked me, looking for absolute validation before she acted on anything.
“With my own two eyes. I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised if the guy’s building something seriously dangerous down there. He’s not exactly the world’s most personable man and if you hadn’t noticed, there are Nazi flags hanging all over the house.”
The officer took a few steps back and whispered something to the man in the white coat that seemed to peak his interest.
“It’s definitely possible,” the Board of Health inspector stated. “I don’t know exactly what it is just yet because I still have a few tests to run, but it’s definitely a volatile substance.”
The officer waved her partner over as two more police cruisers arrived on the scene. More bystanders had gathered and the crowd was blocking the street to the point where oncoming cars couldn’t pass through. The female officer whispered to her partner and they immediately approached Getman. They started aggressively questioning him and the voices grew louder and louder. Getman became defensive and started to back away, but the two officers approached cautiously, the woman cop hovering her hand over her still-sheathed baton. Getman began shouting at his accusers and within seconds a scuffle broke out. The crowd of onlookers roared like the audience at a professional wrestling event.
The male cop tackled Getman to the ground, trying to subdue him long enough to shackle his wrists with a pair of shiny handcuffs. Getman fought hard however, flopping around like a fish and flailing his arms and legs like a spoiled child who didn’t get what he wanted at the toy store. He was about as spastic as his savage dog, who at this point was going ballistic chained to a tree as he watched his owner sit on the receiving end of a little justified police brutality. It wasn’t long before the woman officer got into the fray, beating Getman with her now-freed baton. He defended himself well, but a third officer ran in to make an assist, stomping Getman in the head and knocking him senseless so that they could restrain him properly.
After the dust settled, Getman was loaded into the back of one of the police cars. He wasn’t responsible for the green ooze on Jimmy’s lawn, but he sure did a good job at making himself look guilty and he screamed bloody murder as they tried to make sense of the situation. The neighborhood kids and a few adults cheered. I was guilty of clapping myself.
Louie pulled into my driveway and motioned me over. He remained in the car, but rolled down his window so that we could talk.
“What’s all of the excitement?” he asked me.
“Oh, nothing really Louie. The police just caned and arrested Getman because they think he was responsible for dumping some sort of familiar green liquid on Jimmy’s lawn. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
“No,” he said, sweating and twitching nervously.
“Interesting. So, how was Revere today?”
“Still smells the same, you know. Some things never change I guess.”
Louie was visibly shaken and he giggled like a timid school boy at the end of each sentence he finished.
“Yeah, I suppose you’re right. It’s kind of like the leopard that can’t change its spots, even though you give the leopard a chance to prove himself and make a change.”
Louie didn’t say anything. He just stared forward, unable to make direct eye contact with me.
“So did the ten dollars cover you for gas?” I asked him.
“It might have fell a little short, but I’ll cover it.”
“I wouldn’t want to short change you, Louie. I’m a man of honor and I like to deliver on what I promised. You know—like you.”
Louie stuck his head out of the window and smiled. “It will be our secret. Don’t worry about anything. The next t-shirt is on me.”
I looked down at Louie and couldn’t help but grin. He was a slime ball and he’d never change, but he was a likeable slime ball, which is not an easy feat to pull off, yet somehow he managed it.
“Well,” he said checking his watch. “I’ve got to meet my mother in ten minutes so I’ll catch you later.”
And with that Louie drove off like lightning, the fastest I have ever seen that green station wagon move. Mikey emerged out of the crowd of onlookers dressed in workout clothes, almost knocking the man in the bathrobe to the ground.
“Hey, watch where you’re going,” the man demanded.
Mikey turned and snarled at the man, showing his teeth like a dog ready to strike. There were no words said, just silent intimidation and with that the man slinked away.
“You missed all of the fireworks, Mikey,” I told him as he approached.
“I heard all about it from Rose. Can you believe that shit?”
“No. It’s crazy. It was like a scene right out of Cops.”
“Just so you know I know, I heard somebody talking about how it was you that told the cops Getman was involved.”
“Yeah, that’s true.”
“Well, not that I have to tell you, but I’ve got your back if Getman finds out and decides to come after you.”
“Thanks, Mikey. There’s nobody I’d rather have in my corner.”
“What I don’t understand is, why does all of this weird shit always seem to happen around you?”
“I couldn’t tell you, but what I do know is that Getman deserved a good beating, so why question fate?”
“Good point, let’s just hope that they cart away that dog of his too. I’m not scared of many things in life, but that canine gargoyle is an exception.”
“I hear that. That thing is straight out of a horror movie.”
I looked down at Mikey’s outfit, and chuckled under my breath. He was wearing spandex shorts and his cock bulge was put on display for all those interested to see. I didn’t want to look, but the mangled mound of penis and balls was like a car wreck that you couldn’t look away from.
“So you able to hit the early aerobics class or what?” he asked me. “I’m all amped and ready to pound the workout pavement.”
“Yeah, I’ve got nothing on tap right now. Let me just put on some different clothes and then we can get out of here.”
I headed to my house for a wardrobe change as Mikey stretched in the street, farting and burping as he put pressure on his stomach by bending over to touch his toes. I returned quickly and we slid into the Ferrari. Mikey had a hard time squeezing his big frame into the tight fit of the car, but his face lit up with excitement like a kid going to his first baseball game. He ran his hand over the black leather dashboard like he was feeling up one of his many collegeaged conquests and when I turned the key, the engine rumbled like a tank.
“This car is the balls!” he said.
We drove down Oak Street while Mikey hung his head out of the window like a basset hound out for a ride. He searched all over for people that he knew, hoping they would see him and be impressed by his choice of transportation. The Ferrari was a movie star and Mikey wanted to be a part of its entourage. To the Mikeys of the world, the car was a miniature slice of Heaven, but I knew better. It was merely a pretty collection of nuts and bolts that accelerated like a scalded cat. From bumper to fender, it was all about showing off and unwarranted mystique. Shakespeare would have said it was, “full of sound and fury but signifying nothing,” and while I agreed, I still couldn’t part with her. However, at the same time, I didn’t want to spoil Mikey’s illusion about the car, but I found myself unable to bite my tongue when he dropped “the life would be perfect” bomb.
“If I had this car and money, man my life would be the balls,” he said, utterly convinced by his own voice. “I’d be the king of the world, I’ll tell you that much.”
“It’s just a car, Mikey,” I told him. “What you’re buying into is not what the car actually is, but instead, the perception of what people think the car is. And that’s not necessarily a good thing. Trust me, I know. People look at you like a Martian when you have a car like this. They envy you, but at the same time they think of you as someone who is much different than them, which means you end up alienating yourself.”
“Why did you buy it then, smarty pants?”
He had me there. I’m lecturing him, but at the same time, I own the car. I tried to explain to him that for me, the car first represented freedom and escape from a world I didn’t enjoy. I liked the idea of being a filled suitcase away from going nowhere fast, but I quickly learned that it was nothing but a misguided fantasy.
“All the car did was get me a bunch of speeding tickets,” I continued. “I’d go for long drives in the country with her, and then I’d come back owing the state hundreds of dollars. I ended up having to go to driver’s retraining school because of all of the violations that the car brought me. Trust me, money and fancy cars do not bring happiness and at the end of the day, it doesn’t make you feel any better about yourself. I know it sounds like a cliché thing for someone with money and a Ferrari to say, but that’s because you realize it first hand when you have these things. For me, it’s not really about what I can buy and how I can spend it. Having money represents independence from the system. Money doesn’t magically make things perfect like the movies imply, but it has given me the means to fight the good fight.”
“With all due respect, Drago, the good fight can mean anything because everyone thinks they’re fighting their own version of it,” he said, sounding far more intelligent than I had yet to give him credit for. “For me, getting by in life is the good fight. For Mrs. Fazzino, the good fight is having enough bags in that vacuum of hers to carry on the madness. We all have our own good fight to go toe-to-toe with, and whether it brings happiness or not, money will help push all of us closer to that goal.”
I was floored. It was the first time Mikey had gotten deep with me, and to my surprise, there was another layer to him that I hadn’t ever looked for. Although he only made one point, that point silenced me because it made me realize how pompous I sounded.
Also, I couldn’t help but think how ridiculous it was that I was giving Mikey a lecture about materialism in a Ferrari, especially when I was sticking a needle with a hot dose of affluenza in his arm. He had the leather smell of the car in his nostrils and the vibrating muscular metal was affecting every nerve ending in his body. I had planted the bug of a vehicular promised land in his brain. Mikey liked what he saw and was feeding off of the feeling the car gave him. I knew that to him, the Ferrari would be one additional diversion to take his attention away from what really mattered in life.
“You never finished answering my question,” Mikey said. “Why did you buy the car in the first place?”
“The reason I have the car now is to destroy the illusion of it so that I can pursue other wants that may have some real meaning,” I said carefully, hoping not to step on my words.
“Like what?” he asked me.
“Jennifer,” I said confidently.
The mere mention of her made me feel good. She was a constant flame burning inside of me.
“You know, you two may be right for each other after all,” Mikey told me. “You and Jennifer are really kind of similar, what with all of the stuff going on in both of your heads. I’ll bet the two of you are having a real—what do you call it—meeting of the minds.”
“That we are, Mikey,” I said with a chuckle. “That was a nice way of putting it. A wise man you are.”
We entered the posh health club about twenty minutes later. Mikey was carrying a change of clothes and a water bottle in a bowling bag that Rose had lent to him. I had a funny feeling from the start that my gym time with Mikey was going to be a strange outing even by my standards and although I expressed my concern to him, Mikey convinced me that it was going to be as “smooth as a Brazilian chick’s cooch” and that it was going to be his night to shine.
Wasting no time, Mikey immediately approached a sweaty woman who was ordering a protein smoothie at the juice bar.
“Can I buy you a cran something or other?” he asked her.
She turned and glared at Mikey with disgust, and I grabbed him by the ear and marched him away before she had a chance to call the manager. We made our way to the front desk, presented our introductory coupons and received locker numbers with combinations for the electronic locks, as well as a pair of towels. Once inside the locker room, I located my locker and found that it was adjacent to a naked old man who refused to adhere to the normal standards of personal space. I loaded my wallet and keys into the locker and shut the door. I was already dressed for working out in a pair of faded blue sweatpants and an old t-shirt. To my surprise, Mikey’s spandex shorts were not part of his gym garb, and he quickly removed them and slipped on a pair of far too short nylon shorts with the word “EVERLAST” just above his crotch. He then changed into a skintight muscle shirt with the words “UNDER CONSTRUCTION” stretched across his gorilla-sized chest and put on a pair of bright red wrestling shoes that seemed brand new and just out of the box. We had to wait an extra five minutes as he wrapped electrical tape around his wrists and fingers and sprayed his entire body down with pungent cologne.
After putting the finishing touches on his bizarre outfit, Mikey stepped in front of a larger-than-life mirror and slapped himself in the face to get himself psyched up. Curious, perhaps even bi-curious, the naked old man looked on and Mikey noticed the pervert’s heat-seeking glare as it sharp shot his alimentary canal. Never one to back down from a stare, Mikey opted to express his displeasure on the matter.
“If you keep eyeballing me, I’m not gonna think twice to cram my foot right up your Depends-wearing ass.”
The naked old man scurried into the showers in hopes of escaping an inner city beat down.
“You realize we’re going to hip hop aerobics and not a boxing ring, right?” I asked Mikey.
“Life is a fight, my man. You have to be prepared at all times.”
And then like a prize fighter headed into a twelve round bout, Mikey covered his neck with the towel and marched down the hallway of the locker room. I followed, shaking my head in amusement and bracing myself for a tidal wave of double takes. We followed the signs directing us to the aerobics room and soon realized that we were the only two men taking the class. Mikey grinned sensing an early victory and made eye contact with each of the unsuspecting women in the first two rows.
“I look okay, don’t I?” Mikey whispered.
“You look like a kajillion dollars,” I whispered back.
“Then why am I getting such strange looks? Do I have a boogie on my face or something?”
“No,” I said. “I just don’t think they’re used to having all that many penises in here.”
“Oh yeah, we’re as good as golden in this vagina mart! Head to the back. We can watch all of the asses dance and stretch!”
We established a base camp for ourselves in the corner of the room far from any direct contact with the other Jane Fondas in attendance. The instructor arrived shortly after we got settled and she unknowingly forced both of us to do a double take. She was a six-foot tall blond with long, toned legs and a stomach you would sell your own mother to lick. Even the women that surrounded us ogled her, appreciating every nook and cranny of her body, which seemed to be sculpted from the hands of Michelangelo himself. Mikey had to literally wipe the drool from the corners of his mouth when he realized he hadn’t swallowed any saliva since she entered the room.
“What I wouldn’t give to stick my dumbbell into that,” he whispered to me, just loud enough so that the woman in front of us overheard, turned, and called Mikey a pig with her eyes.
The class began slowly, but the pace quickly established itself as something I was unprepared for. We both tried to follow the various kicking and punching and jumping that the instructor threw at us, but we didn’t come close to mimicking her movements, and instead appeared to come off as a couple of slow Stanleys headed for the short bus. At one point I looked over at Mikey and caught him frozen in a crouched position, his foot lodged close to his head. He looked like a dog attempting to scratch away a pesky flea from its ear and I laughed, breaking my own concentration and falling to the padded floor. My tumble to the mat knocked me out of contention completely and I could no longer follow the pattern of moves that the rest of the class was performing flawlessly, so instead I opted to doing nothing but jumping jacks for the remaining of the class.
Meanwhile, I couldn’t help looking at all the women in their spandex suits jacking their buttocks up to unprecedented heights. There was a great sense of urgency about their bones. Their arms were spinning like the blades of a fan and I had to dodge what I hoped to be unmotivated punches from the exercisers that surrounded me. I watched in wonder, these women animated by the passions and impulses that have driven men since the dawn of mankind, these women with their swollen liquid faces like they were just baptized in testosterone.
Suddenly Mikey fell to the ground and his thighs and buttocks shook violently. At first I thought he was pulling a practical joke or in the middle of crafting a high-concept attempt at gaining the sympathy vote from the uninterested women, but when his face turned blue and his eyes rolled back into his skull, I knew it wasn’t just Mikey being Mikey. The instructor stopped the class immediately and everybody gathered around him, each questioning the problem at hand and who should be sent to get help. One attractive woman with child-bearing hips informed the group that she was a dental technician and that Mikey was most likely having an epileptic attack.
“So, where do you work as a dental technician?” I asked her as Mikey continued to convulse at my feet.
“Brighton,” she replied as another woman in the crowd suggested somebody put two fingers in Mikey’s mouth to keep him from swallowing his tongue.
“Really,” I said. “I’ve been looking for a new dentist. Mine just retired.”
“Dr. Lewiston is excellent. You should totally try him out.”
“I think I might. How do you spell his last name?”
“L-E-W-I-S-T-O-N.”
An irate chubby woman broke up my conversation with the dental technician, cockblocking me when I wasn’t even thinking with my cock.
“Just listen to that horrible pig,” the fat man-hater shouted. “His friend could be dying on the floor and he’s trying to get that woman’s number.”
“That’s not true!” I shouted back. “Mind your own business, you cow.”
The crowd gasped and I returned my attention to Mikey, whose body had stopped vibrating. He was coming around and his eyes had repositioned themselves in their rightful place.
“Drag me into the hallway,” he begged.
“Mikey, I don’t think that’s a good idea. You should rest a minute. You’re sick.”
Against doctor’s orders, Mikey tried to stand, but fell back to the padded floor, his right ball exploding out of his boxer shorts like a firecracker on the Chinese New Year. I half considered flicking it back in to do my friend a “solid,” but I quickly reconsidered when I saw the entire class of women staring down at his testicular misfortune. The best I could do for him was to prevent somebody from accidentally stepping on it.
“Why’s everybody staring at my crotch?” he asked me quietly.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat it, Mikey. Your nut is flapping in the breeze like a screen door in a hurricane. It’s not a pretty sight.”
Forcing himself to recover from his lightheadedness so that he could save what little of his dignity remained, Mikey rose to his feet with my help and we exited slowly. He was still dazed and groggy when he nonchalantly tucked his testicle back into his shorts and we collected our things from the locker room and left the health club, never to return. Mikey entered a heavyweight champ, but left after a knockout in the fourth round.
I loaded Mikey into my car and he leaned back to rest. Before driving out of the parking lot I