5. Plasma & Wigwood (December 2012)
She was a striking, smiling, stylish, 50-something Asian lady now, who suddenly said: “Hi there, sir. You sure do look familiar. Do I know you from somewhere? A rooftop, perhaps?”
But first, let’s go back a few days. Well, really, more like years. Decades, even. We can fit through this time portal, this narrow worm hole. Button those loose sleeves. Yep. Here we go. Watch that last step. It’s a woozy doozy.
<flash> Ah, here it is: Charlotte back in the early 1970s. The Plaza-Midwood area of the inner eastside was not the dichotic yupscale gentrification/neo-hipsterdom creation it is today. It was a much seedier, completely non-trendy, often dangerous scene all the way around.
Back then, drug addicts were selling their blood plasma for another fix. Alcoholics slept it off on the sidewalks, lying in their reeking urine. An X-rated theater featured skin flicks that would have you stuck to your seat. Literally. And no-nonsense working-class greasy-spoon restaurants, where even the salads were deep-fried, were the norm. Ok, a possible exaggeration there.
PBR (Pabst Blue Ribbon) was drank because it was American and dirt cheap – not because it was the hipster brew of choice. In fact, the current crop of trust-fund scenesters were not even born yet.
The pigeons were more numerous in those days. But, the exact reason why escapes me at the moment. Oh, wait a sec; it was the bag ladies. I remember seeing them at Central & The Plaza, near the bus stop, tossing out pieces of stale bread. Yeah, that was it. Remember that? No? Looking elsewhere? It’s ok; you’re excused. Sorry about that senseless diversion.
Well, you get the picture. I’m putting this out as product. And parcel. Sometimes you have to type stuff like this to keep the story going. Or, to momentarily derail it while buying time. Ah, just a little icing on the red velvet cake, which we haven’t even yet baked. But, I digress. Moving night along.
Ok, now there was this one really bad alcoholic pill-popper. He was a young white dude with light brown hair, of average build, who was a regular at the plasma donation center near Clement & Central. And, lo and behold, he got the nickname, Plasma. I kid you not.
Well, at first he really despised the moniker, but he grew into liking its fit. Sometimes after downing a six-pack before noon, he would scream, “Mr. Plasma is ready to collect!” That usually cleared the sidewalk.
Let me stop for a second and tell you that that last Diet Cherry Coke – the one that was on the office floor for seven months – well, some remnants were left on the inside of the plastic bottle after gulping it down – the same remnants which are probably on my insides now. Lovely, I know. And, hey, how about that – a sentence with a back–to–back that. Did you catch that? That is to be avoided, right? Write. And, yes, I do this without Adderall or sign-language sympathy. Ok, enough, enough, enough. Back to our waggish tale.
Perhaps you are now wondering: Did Plasma have a job? Why, of course not. Where did he live? Would you believe that he rented, via a stipend from good ol’ dad, a back yard 8’ x 10’ metal shed with no heat source for $20/month off Lamar Avenue? And, all through the winter, too, mind you.
Yes, he wrapped himself in five sleeping bags when it got down to 10°F. Mr. Plasma slept through the frigid nights donning a found-on-the-street Sugar Mountain ski mask.
He timed his bathroom breaks like a German train. The fast-food restaurant’s sink made for a quick sponge bath at 9:30 AM (after the breakfast rush had passed).
And, how did he smell? Usually as ripe as a soft, decomposing, post-Halloween pumpkin.
I can hear one of you out there asking about his lineage – so very important in provincial ‘70s Charlotte, you know. Well, Plasma was the son of a downtown banker. Back then downtown was called, well, downtown – not uptown. Maybe some geologic uplift in the ‘80s? Who knows? That’s another story almost altogether.
Yes, it was the oh-too-typical story of the only-son rich kid. Pop was always bailing him out of his screw-ups. A pair of downtown lawyers stayed very well-appointed just because of the plasmatic one’s misadventures in the Queen City of the South. (Trivia note: This is also the motto of the city of Cebu in the Philippines.)
Money for the essentials was never a problem for Plasma. There was no real need for a job with his next-to-nil aspirational outlook. The blood-plasma money became extra beer and pill money. It was all an endless party without an end in sight. Well, it was up until he embarrassed his dad at an important board meeting.
Somehow, our boy Plasma gained access to the 29th floor boardroom, staggered in, totally wasted, demanding money.
He was immediately cut off – financially and otherwise. He would never receive money from, or hear from, his dad again. His financial life-support line was severed in an instant. As for his mother, she died when he was three. Maybe I should have told you that earlier. Sorry. My bad. I’m not the greatest story teller. Please, bear with me. The finish line is nigh. It’s a short story, after all.
I think that it was early in the summer of ’75 when the 21-year-old, scraggly, frayed, ready-for-the-grave Plasma met up with 20-year-old Marvin Wood. Yeah, that sounds about right. A hot late June day in 1975. I think we’re in the ballpark now. Popcorn! Hot pop porn! [sic]
Marvin, as fate often has it, was from the wrong side of the tracks: West Charlotte. Wilkinson Boulevard was his beat, and he beat it well. The oldest of five; he was lean, black as night, and wore a red cabbie cap. He knew how hard the street could be, and was as sly as a fox when it came to making a clever move in dire straits. When loot got razor-thin in the spring of ’75, he headed eastward.
At first Marvin indulged in legitimate – though low pay – work as a bag boy at the original Harris-Teeter grocery store. Sometimes he received some tips, but it was pretty paltry overall. He was just eking out an existence.
Marvin rented a room in a flophouse on nearby Hawthorne Lane. He often wondered if he should have attended summer school at West Meck as he watched moths circle the unshielded overhead light bulb, night after night. He would have graduated two years ago.
Another hot, humid, hazy morning. It was just another boring day of bagging vittles on checkout line nine. A can of peas landed in the brown paper bag. Marvin could see his sad face in the reflection on the shiny silver can’s top. He quickly put a loaf of bread over it. He thought: This is nowhere. Must do something. Something else. Something not here.
Ok, we have our two characters identified, Plasma and Marvin, though not so well developed. No argument there. But, they still have not met yet. Do you now, sage reader, feel a tension in your room/space/mind? Yes, I can feel it over here.
<snap> Something that was elastic … is not anymore. Ok, enough noodling. (Mercifully, I’m not a self-indulgent lead guitarist).
When a loosely stitched button snapped off his yellow dress shirt, Marvin just sighed, “Just focking [sic] great!” Then a soup can ripped through the brown paper bag. His grocery-store shift was spoiling fast. No, he was not a happy bagger.
Now, guess who was coming through Marvin’s line with a 12-pack of RWB (Red, White & Blue) beer on an early, maximum A/C, July afternoon? Well, I won’t introduce a third main character in such a short read. Well, not just yet. Yep, it was Plasma.
The two of them immediately struck up a rapport in fate-filled checkout line nine (lives). When Marvin told Plasma that his last name was Wood, an already inebriated Plasma shouted, “Wigwood!”
Moreover, they agreed to slug down some brew later that night on the roof of the Plaza Pussycat Theater across the street. They would discuss the next hustle, or so they said.
At 7:55 PM, Marvin and a hot 19-year-old Asian girl named Jade met Plasma behind the adult theater with a bottle of Scotch whiskey. Plasma had already begun drinking his 12-pack; only eight bottles remained in the cardboard box.
Plasma scurried up the ladder, beer box under right arm, in a matter of seconds, never missing a rung. He motioned for Marvin and Jade to come on up. Jade ascended first. They all safely landed on the X-rated movie theater’s flat, tar-covered roof.
There were some low-profile lawn chairs up there. They sat down as twilight descended upon them. They could hear the sounds of the passing cars on Central Avenue, but they couldn’t be seen due to the four-foot-high brick parapet.
The cheap Scotch got passed around, trailed by a green cigarette. Intoxication quickly set in.
Soon they were telling tales of life in Plaza-Midwood. Their laughing grew louder and longer. Marvin suddenly jumped up to make a grand announcement, perhaps to impress the ever-sexy Jade, who was studying both of them for any signs of sense.
However, Marvin’s bare right arm brushed against the building’s electrical service head. Some of the insulation on the hot wire was missing.
Result: Marvin was electrocuted in seconds. He had been standing in a pool of rainwater.
Plasma and Jade looked at each other in horror as Marvin’s smoking body dropped off the live conductor. They freaked out. Jade hurried back down the ladder, never to be seen again.
Plasma thought about what to do for seventeen minutes, then got paranoid, and exited the scene, too, fearing that he would be charged with murder.
Marvin’s body wasn’t found for another twenty-six days. It made the local area papers and the TV news. The police classified it as suspicious, and never closed the case. Several decades went by, along with thousands of rain clouds, train whistles and horn beeps.
And then on a hotter-than-normal June day in 2012, Plasma was walking by Bich’s Nail Salon, head-down, when he heard a familiar Asian female’s voice.