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Troublemaker

St. Martin's Press

I come to New York from Memphis.

Sort of.

To understand one you got to understand the other, if you can keep them straight. If you can keep them straight you's one step ahead of me. Like I say I's in Omaha, Nebraska before I's in Colorado Springs, and before that I's in New York City. In New York City, I's at the Madam's. It was Nebraska first, straight out of the womb, then Memphis later on, from Memphis to Buford, Arkansas but don't get me started on that cause I decided I best just forget Buford altogether if I can.

So: New York City, like I say. I go over it in my head again and again but it's a circle and soon as I get to a point I think I can stop I see I's still caught up in it, with as much of it ahead of me as behind. For now, just behind's Nebraska, and right behind that's the Madam putting me on the train headed there. Before that, back farther or maybe just ahead, when I first come to New York, is coming to her house fresh off the bus from that place in Arkansas don't exist no more.

When I first come in I got everything a body could want. Made me feel like that was life; you know, figure out it ain't working one place you go on to another next in line. Course that was back before I come to feel there's limits on these things. I been kicking around Forty-deuce the day my bus come in, happy to have my feet on the ground after being on the road so long, until I come across some guys hanging out front of Howard Johnson's just down from the big co'cola sign. They told me about working at the house, for the Madam, on account of we got to talking about how I's broke and got no place to go. They took me there and Bam straight off I's making the dough; got a room of my own and anything else I want or so I thought.

They could of at least half warned me.

There was all kinds of rules. No drugging in the Madam's house for one. But there's ways to get around that one: always was and will be. I learned that — how to hide it — from my pa. No drugs, and keep up appearances. Madam practically spit-combed her boys' hair, told us what to wear and what to say and when to shut up, which is the part I ain't never been good at.

Turned out she was right on a lot of things I didn't want to give her credit for. I can see that, now. She said I'd be big for a couple months but don't start to count on it. Said I'd do good to keep a thought to the future. The johns like a new face makes them think well maybe this here's a Hardy Boy, one of the Brady brothers. Just a kid next door. Act like you's in it but ain't, like somehow you stumbled into doing this for a living, which is anyhow mostly true but not like they got it, on account of I kind of been down that road before, in Memphis, road what led right to this house, even if I didn't know I's on it or what address I's looking for.

Madam said after a while they'd figure I's there to stay, that maybe once I was next door but now I's stuck here; for good. And she was right. After a while I's sitting on my ass in the living room — john after john — trying to remember all them things she told me to do would get get me sessions once I got to start working for them.

My only chance was to make myself good at what I done, get to be a pro as they says but I ain't never knowed just how to do that. I'd finally get a guy up in the room and wouldn't know what to say or not, fall all over myself to the point the Madam got phone calls about what the hell you letting that boy up in them rooms for and what kind of house was this anyway.

"What are you good at?" she asked me one time after yet another john wanted one thing and I give him everything but.

"Don't know," I says. "I can name wildflowers. And I know geography."

"I mean up in the rooms," she says. "We're talking about the rooms here. What can you do upstairs that gives you an advantage? You've got to think about these things."

And I racked my brains. But I couldn't never come up with nothing. All I knowed was to try whatever she just told me downstairs — I tripped through it like I ain't never done it before, which the Madam said would of been okay if I didn't always look like I's set to vomit. The other guys was always talking about the money, making the cash, but I didn't see why nobody needed it. Who needs money when you got a warm place — the bed and eats and the whole shebang? Only thing I needed that the Madam weren't about to give me was my dope, the friend I made from the guys what first brung me to the house — better friend than Pa's liquor and pills ever been. When I needed that, I got it out on the street from a guy they knowed called Mannie — good old Mannie — who didn't care if I looked like I's about to chuck up, long as I put out.

"Just remember, you got the power," one of them other boys told me when I first come in. "They don't know why they're here; why you're here. They think it's just about sex."

But I didn't know what he was talking about neither. He was twenty-nine and been doing it since he's fifteen, so he got more time to figure it out than I done. I just wanted a place to stay and room to do my own thing, didn't care about money cause what did I need it for.

Thing is, even though I didn't need no money to live there, to live there I got to make some, which is another circle I couldn't make a straight line.

So after a while Madam said she couldn't do nothing with me no more; I's a lost cause. Said she weren't stupid, she knowed I's on drugs; said I got about two minutes left there. Course then I started trying harder, gone up into the rooms and squinted my eyes to stay awake and figure whatever it was needed doing to make this thing work, like it done back in Memphis in the bars. Said to myself I got the power over and over until the words run together. But the dope kind of set up camp in my head so's everything seemed like it was happening in another place, and I couldn't figure out the system.

One of my last days at the house — the last of the few minutes — time I's in the Grey Flannel room with yet another john wanted it without the condom, I done already give up. If I got all the power how come I got to keep telling myself's what I's thinking when I's thinking at all. In the back of my head, in the little pocket where things still made sense, place as impossible to get to as any other I's set on getting, I knowed I's on my way out, and weren't all the power in the world could change that. I been through this before, so what did I care. One john was like every other, and still I couldn't figure him out.

"Now you can make some money with this man," says Madam downstairs, after I left the guy in the Grey Flannel room — what's decked out like somebody's office, like any minute somebody could hold a meeting there all hush hush and ain't we all important — telling him to get comfortable like the day he's born.

"He's a regular. He'll try to get you to go without a condom. Don't tell him no, even if you don't intend to accommodate him. Remember what I told you? About suggesting something else before he even realizes he's not getting what he wanted? It's all about suggestion. Make another suggestion and show him what you're talking about to make it stick in his mind. He'll see you again if you do it right. Keep in mind he doesn't like you if you're a day over twelve, so don't talk much but keep a smile on. Think of high school prom, like it's next weekend. You're one of those shy boys: Everything's okay by you, sure, whatever."

"Are you listening?"

The john told me to stand a ways back so he could get a look, which was fine by me. I smiled doing it. Then he asked what was my favorite rock bands.

"Pretty much everything," I says, grinning cause what the hell made him think I got time to listen to the music.

Before long, it was just the floor I's looking at. He'd started undressing. If I watched him, all I could think was how white he was, how his dark socks left a purple ring around his legs when he took them off. If I looked at the floor I could think of something else, try to keep a grip on what I's supposed to do next and who he's supposed to be, manage half a smile.

He gone on talking phedinkus; about his wife, just a little, and a lot about his brother. How his father built up a business for him and his brother to divvy, but it was the john's idea his brother's getting greedy — said he lived with him all his life and knowed him like the back of his hand. He wanted somehow to get rid of his brother, kick him out of his half.

"Ever since we were little we were at each other's throats," the john said. "That house wasn't big enough for the two of us. He's always, always thought he could get his way."

But it was all says which to me — business and partners and shares. And I ain't never lived long enough with nobody to tell one thing or the other about always. I looked at his wingtips over by the white leather chair in the corner, stared hard like I's sober. Them I could figure — not a trace of dirt or wear, polished slick like he just bought them, like they was still a commercial what put the idea in his head to get them in the first place. Only thing give them away was their smell. From across the room it was office carpet, cold sweat socks, lady's perfume, the guts of a house on the edge of the suburbs.

"I like to have my balls licked. Can you do that for me?" as he set the lettuce on the bedside table, pulled the bedspread down, and jumped on the bed like he was still a football star.

Course I didn't want to; I tried to think was there anything Madam ever said about something like that, tried to think up a suggestion what could make something else seem just as good, but weren't nothing come to my head, and meanwhile he's staring hard at me like I weren't the grinning boy wonder he paid for no more. So I just smiled and said no.

"Only with peoples I know better."

"How do we get to know each other better?" he asked, like it was some game he could figure out.

Then he picked up a smut rag from the pine trunk, foot of the bed, started flipping through it. Every other page or so he stopped, made a sound like hmm, or there we go, or now we's talking, but it was only him talking, studying the magazine hard like to get ready to tell me who I was. I made my way to the bed and sat next to him, which point he tossed that one onto the floor and picked up some other from the trunk — this one all out; got the pictures of guys in action. Weren't no way I'd be able to come up with anything could beat that.

"Here's what I'm talking about," and he pointed to a full-page close-up of some guy licking some other's whatnot.

"See that?"

I leaned over just a little; just enough.

"How well do you think they know each other?" he asked, looked straight at me and pushed the magazine closer so's I felt like I's being surrounded.

How should I know? I wanted to say, or Scoot over. But all what come out was, "Search me."

"I know you better than you think," he says and nudged my arm with his elbow. "Hmm?"

Then like we's talking about something else he starts telling me how I probably got lots of boyfriends, I's a little princess; said I never been with a real man like this before, never had a real man I done nothing with, said I got to have some Italian in me — that he could tell I get lippy. If I ever got lippy with him he said he'd speak Italian like he knowed I understood; he'd beat my ass to a pulp then love me just as hard the next morning. Kept going on and on like most the rest of them, like we weren't where we was, which would of been fine if I could ever figure out just where it was they wanted to be instead. He didn't seem half as real to me as he thought he was.

"If you want me to I will," I said. "With protection."

And boy he shut that magazine quick, and pitched it past the foot of the bed, where it landed on the floor with a noise like somebody got slapped. But I paid him no mind. I reached over for the dental dams and lube out the bedside drawer. Before he could say bugger somebody or something up I's rolling a condom on him, thinking:

Must be I's still smiling. My mouth's got a butterfly cramp.

"When I see that other boy," john says, "what's his name, the one from France, the rugby player: He doesn't make me wear a condom."

I didn't know whose pack of lies he meant — no telling what the others said in the room — where they was from, how old, how turned on. And I couldn't let that get to me, couldn't let it break my concentration, so I just gone on with what I's doing. Getting my dope from Mannie on the outside was one thing: Got to do what you got to do. But this guy weren't doing me no favors. I weren't about to touch him without something standing in the way. Weren't much the Madam said I could remember but I remember she said weren't no reason not to use a rubber in the house. So, as long as I's there, I figured I got every right.

After I lubed my palm he took the condom off; pulled it at both ends so's it let sail across the room like a rubber band. He looked at me with a make me stare, folded his arms over his stomach.

"They aren't foolproof anyway. The number of times you use them a day, you might as well not."

Well my head gone empty, I just blanked. Couldn't remember nothing Madam or nobody else told me, not ever, just that I's in one of them dreams, where you's on stage and ain't even knowed you's in a play until you blinked and seen you was there: Weren't nothing to do but go on with it. Just barrel through, and if you screwed the thing up so be it.

I told him he weren't half as big in some places as all around, like he thought. I ain't never had a boyfriend, I said, not really; just almost, right before I come to New York, in the real world I put out of my head to make room for cockamamie make-believe like this here. I ain't had a boyfriend cause I never found one, and just when I found one — just when I thought maybe I could get what he seemed to think should be so easy for me to find — it got took away. That was real, I said. That was real. So I didn't know what the hell he's talking about and he could eat shit, and not mine cause I weren't about to let him near me. If he didn't want a rubber he could call the rugby player and see was he game for playing without a net.

* * *

Before the place what don't exist no more it was Memphis, Tennessee. When I get to remembering without I can stop myself, it's all the flowers. That part of the circle's so many flowers. A body ain't seen Memphis until he seen spring, what's got the azaleas running up and down just about every street, and all in between them it's iris, bright yellow daffodils and forsythia, hydrangea. Columbine, what's got seeds so tiny you can't see them and the wind blows them all over to far-flung places — so far from where they started they might of come from the place I first learned all them flowers' names, and maybe like me they won't never go back. All them's something to lay eyes on.

But for the longest time Memphis was about wondering where was I going to grab a wink at night.

Finally I hooked up with a place for seventy-five dollars a month. It was downtown Memphis Main Street; way past the decent houses respectable folk lived in. This was deepest downtown, busted lip of the city, few blocks up from the Mississippi. Vacant lots and hollowed-out buildings left over from the cotton trade and immigrant days. Place called MOJO'S, or so the faded sign hung out front said. Maybe used to be a store or some kind of business. Now it was just a blank two-story, north end. Ground floor's one big room and a wall of windows what faced the street. Second floor up creaky stairs was strictly flophouse; two empty hallways broke off into small rooms, every room got a fireplace didn't work and a window wouldn't open. Only way to lock the doors was from the outside — so's it felt like anybody could come along and trap you in. Plaster hung from the ceiling in big chunks over a floor what weren't but splinters.

I got family in Memphis, or so I thought: Nana on my pa's side and Aunt Edna on my ma's. Across the river into Arkansas, at that place, I got me another grandmama: If things didn't work out on the one bank of the Mississippi I could cross on over and try my luck with her's what I's thinking. Cause like I say, back then I thought that's how these things worked. Already I been living in Nana's house farther uptown. Ma sent me there from Omaha after Pa died, said I'd never go to college, get a job, do with my life like better peoples done. She been telling me that all along, so I didn't figure there was any use trying, on account of I got to take her word for it, she knowed me longer'n I knowed myself. She needed me out of her hair she said. Well, good, I figured. I'll go to Memphis, where I got more family to choose from.

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Excerpted from Troublemaker by Brian Pera. Copyright © 2000 Brian Pera. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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