This is where I would include links to my old college novella but I can't figure out how to do it. The formatting on the new site sucks the sweat off a dead man's balls. It's so goddamn awful that I actually miss blogger. Anyway, because I can't link on this piece of shit 2.0 site we're working with, I should tell you that to read the previous two chapters you need to click on Nathan DeGraaf's blog and then scroll down. Also, the words you're reading right now should be in italics. But I can't figure out how to do that either.
2.0 can fuck itself with a crowbar up the ass until it bleeds.
Anyway, back to the adventures of my old creation, Ethan Lee…
Chapter 2
Saturday, April 17, 1999
Getting into character.
Ethan desired the transition. Changing from Ethan Lee to Jonathan Lowmire was like trading in a Pinto for a Porsche. The only downside: Jonathan Lowmire spent a lot of money.
But hey, Ethan rationalized, he earned it.
Ethan removed Lowmire’s Gucci, Black leather bi-fold from the glove box and transferred his wad of cash into the wallet of his alter ego. As Jonathan Lowmire relaxed in the leather seats of the LS 400, cruising down highway 40 East, he felt a familiar sense of calm come over him. The methamphetamine no longer made him feel edgy, but smooth and in control. Instead of wired and challenged like he felt in the suburbs, he felt powerful and intelligent. He turned his CD disc changer to Mozart. The strains of Wolfgang’s genius entertained him as he drove almost unconsciously.
Lowmire met Mario in an underground-parking garage on Washington Street. At midnight, the garage appeared as always: cars full of people partaking of narcotics while preparing for a good time; parking attendants sitting relaxed in their little glass boxes. In the winter, Lowmire watched parking garage attendants shuffle the homeless into the streets like human garbage, but in April, with the nice weather, the attendants seemed listless and bored.
“What’s up, Jonny?” asked one of the attendants as he glanced over Lowmire’s parking pass.
“Same old shit, different day.”
Lowmire parked in his usual space next to Mario’s blue, ’99 Cadillac Deville.
Jonathan Lowmire watched with apathy as Mario opened his door, stepped out of the car and squashed a cigarette under his black leather Skecher shoes. Mario, as per his custom, wore gray slacks. Instead of his usual white silk shirt however, Mario wore a black T-shirt with the words ‘Fuck Your Problems’ written on it in white letters. Jonathan figured Mario had a tailor in the family. His suits were always top of the line.
“Nice shirt. I guess you ain’t working tonight,” Lowmire said, getting out of his car.
“Fuck you, Jon.”
Jonathan and Mario rarely conversed intellectually. In fact, their conversations rarely went deeper than football, both college and professional.
Lowmire opened his passenger door. Mario put a tasteful, red velvet satchel in the back seat.
Mario lit another cigarette and said, “Boss wants me to wish you a happy birthday for next week.”
According to Lowmire’s identification, he would be twenty-four years on April twenty first.
“Thanks. What’d you get me?”
“A warm pair of cock and balls.”
Lowmire handed Mario a thick wad of bills.
“Tell the boss if he really wants to get me a present he can let me keep the car.”
“You tell him yourself next weekend. He wants to meet you.” Mario counted the money in front of Jonathan.
“Excellent. Tell him I look forward to the meeting.”
“What am I, your fucking messenger?”
“Fuck you, Mario.”
“Fuck you too, Jonny,” said Mario as he entered his car.
Mario drove off. To where Ethan didn’t know, didn’t care and wouldn’t ask, but he knew deep down that someone would die tonight at Mario’s hands. After all, blood is impossible to get out of silk.
Jonathan entered his car, locked the door and divided the drugs. He placed the ecstasy pills in his little metal box (which was simply an Altoid Peppermint box) and opened his car door with the velvet bag full of meth in one hand and the box in the other.
A police cruiser rounded the corner as Jonathan stepped out of the Lexus. Paranoia leapt at him. His heart pumped as he opened the trunk and put the meth inside. When he looked over his shoulder, Jonathan saw that the cop was gone.
Lowmire breathed in the nasty, garage air and sighed relief.
“I love this street,” he said to the parking lot attendant as he walked onto Washington Street.
“Who can blame you, Jonny?” joked the attendant.
Who indeed? thought Jonathan Lowmire.
Jonathan Lowmire had been selling in the clubs for three years. Jonathan always gained a peculiar satisfaction from the fact that the legal rave scene had made the club dealer almost a demigod. In the days of the underground raves everyone was a drug dealer. Now, with the warehouses all under construction and the city finally accepting the club scene, the drug dealer had to be more subtle, more like a business man than a slam dancing rush junkie.
The seventy-person line outside of the Cougar club made no difference to Jon who pushed a twenty dollar bill into the doorman’s hand.
“What up, Jimmy the Greek,” he said to the doorman.
“Jonny, always a pleasure.”
After walking through the metal detectors, Lowmire dropped the twenty dollar cover charge onto the cashier’s table.
“Take your fucking money back, Jonny. For crying out loud.”
Jonathan Lowmire laughed, held out his hand to be stamped and said, “brand me, baby.”
“You know I can’t do that, Jonny.”
Indeed, he couldn’t. The managers of all the clubs on Washington Street knew who dealt most of the drugs. If the cops busted Jonathan in a club, and he had no hand stamp on his hand, the club stayed in the clear. Simple explanation: ‘he must have sneaked in. I don’t run that kind of place, honestly Officer.’ But the managers wanted the dealers anyway. Dealers brought people in. When people in other clubs heard that the best drugs were in The Cougar Club, then said people came to The Cougar Club.
“Hold your hand out,” Jonathan said.
Pete, the cashier, did as he was told.
Jonathan pressed two rolls into his hand. “Go find a woman, Pete.”
“Thanks, Jonny.”
Cougar Club was as always. Techno music pulsed and thumped with a vibrancy so powerful that smoke danced through the room as if it were too hopped up to simply waft. Neon lights, strobe lights, chrome trimmings and imitation Cougar pelts dotted the walls. Like all rave clubs, Cougar Club provided more stimuli than an acid trip in a NASA space shuttle. The place was two stories of relentless women in skin clad outfits, tweaked out ravers in baggy pants with more piercings than brain cells, and the occasional yuppie out for Friday night fun. Tables of private parties provided a place for foreplay. Half-naked club girls twisted their bodies around poles on stages of different heights while the music throbbed with orgasmic intensity.
All of this, thought Jonathan, was nothing more than an annoying headache without ecstasy.
Jonathan had one hundred rolls for which he had paid four dollars apiece. Originally, the crew had purchased all of their rolls from an outfit located in San Antonio where the rave scene had first ballooned in the United States (along with New York—of course). However, once the methamphetamine producing Missouri boot hill area caught wind of the ecstasy craze they began challenging the market. The rolls from San Antonio were better, but cost twice as much. Jonathan knew his rolls came from Springfield, Missouri.
Jonathan chose a table in the back of the balcony, against the wall—a bad spot for most dealers. Usually dealers don’t want to be cornered. They want escape routes. Lowmire didn’t need escape routes. He knew his rights and he knew his customers. Unlike his competition, he was not some punk eighteen-year-old kid lacking knowledge of the world. He sat with his back against the wall for three hours. Beautiful women, ugly women, DJs, waitresses and just about every one in the damn place purchased his one hundred rolls at twenty a piece.
Jonathan Lowmire had earned a profit of sixteen hundred dollars in three hours, and he hadn’t even moved his ounce of meth.
“Hey, Baby,” some familiar redhead of a slut said as Jonathan rose. “Kiss me.”
Jonathan wrapped his arms around her and squeezed her tightly. He forced his tongue down her throat with anger. Lowmire felt her hand take his wallet from his back pocket as she pretended to grab his ass.
As they kissed, Jonathan Lowmire peered from the corner of his eye. He saw her hand the wallet off to a little man with blue hair. Jonathan recognized him right away. His street name was squid. He was half black, half something Asian and he loved dressing in vibrant colors, snorting cocaine and finding easy money.
Lowmire reached behind the slut, grabbed Squid by his collar then elbowed the street urchin in the nose. Jonathan’s left hand pulled the wallet from Squid’s right hand as the little rave demon fell to the floor. Jonathan quickly stuffed his wallet in his front jacket pocket.
“Squid, get the fuck out of here.”
The little club kid disappeared into the crowd.
“How the hell did he get your wallet?” asked the little redheaded slut.
“You’re not that smooth, Woman.”
Her face went from cool confidence to raw anger so quickly that Lowmire felt those two were her only expressions.
“Fuck you.”
“How much?”
“Fuck you again.”
Jonathan glanced at his watch as he walked out to Washington Street.
“Where to tonight?” the parking attendant asked Jonathan as he once again displayed his parking pass.
Lowmire said nothing.
“Let me guess,” the pimply faced kid didn’t know when to shut up. “The East Side.”
Lowmire feigned a smile.
“Later,” he said.
St. Louis is lucky enough to be in both Illinois and Missouri. Lowmire lived in Missouri, but sometimes worked in Illinois. East St. Louis offered more to its suburban patrons than crack heads and gang-bangers (though it had its fair share of crack heads and gang-bangers). The East Side had strip clubs. For some reason, strip clubs are illegal in Missouri unless the stripper’s nipples are concealed. Thus, the only worthwhile strip clubs in St. Louis were found in Illinois.
As Jonathan Lowmire crossed that brown shit colored mess known as the Mississippi River, he thought of Mark Twain. Twain had loved that fucking river. Twain had scoffed at those who didn’t live the river, but who relied on it solely as some kind of beautiful landscape.
What a laugh, thought Lowmire.
The landscape, per se, was a piece of crap. Factories smoked and dumped pollutants into the immediate environment as if waste was all they produced. A floating McDonald’s and a giant horseshoe were the best tourist traps on the river, or rather, they once were. Some years previous, riverboat gambling had been legalized.
As Mozart’s genius soothed his ears and the Lexus slowly found its footing on the gravel parking outside of Diamond’s Gentlemen Club, Jonathan Lowmire removed a little glass pipe from under the driver’s seat. In an effort to come down from his meth buzz, he sat in his expensive car and smoked his expensive kind bud (made in the hydroponics fashion and covered with crystallized THC and many enjoyable red hairs). After removing the velvet bag from his trunk, he stuffed the wad down his pants.
“Time to go to work,” he said to no one as he walked across the parking lot. A factory smoke filled night sky offered only two visible stars.
“This world is fucked, Roger,” he said to the doorman as he walked inside.
“Always has been, Jonny.”
Jon passed strippers, waitresses and bartenders as he went straight to the backroom. If he made a left he would be in the strippers’ dressing room, then Roger and a few other doormen would throw him out on his ass. Jonathan made a right into the manager’s office, which was empty save a huge metal desk, a Hooter’s wall calendar and a small fan.
He pulled a digital scale, a package of little zip-lock bags and a mirror from the bottom drawer.
Breaking up meth was always the boring part. It required care and a soft touch. One wrong sneeze, one accidental gust of wind and thousands of dollars literally got lost in the carpet. Jonathan worked quickly out of routine, but with steady hands. Perfect practice makes for perfect play, thought Lowmire as he used his driver’s license to slip two grams of meth into a little, one inch by one-inch bag.
The door swung open and Lowmire’s heart skipped a beat.
“Calm down, Jonny. Just me.”
“Hey, Rich. Gotta’ present for you.”
Lowmire tossed Rich, who many people (Lowmire included) felt looked exactly like a young Bill Parcells, a three-gram bag.
“How’s Diamond this evening?”
“Fucking Fridays,” Rich said, rubbing his hand through his hair. “I’ve thrown three business men out; some fucking preteen thought he could grab Cynthia’s tits—“
“Whoa, hope you took care of that.”
“Roger beat the fuck out of him, called him a cab.”
“Well, it was nice of him to call a cab.”
“Yeah he’s a sweetheart. Anyway—“
“Business,” said Jon.
“Business,” Rich concurred.
Lowmire leaned back in Rich’s chair and said, “shoot.”
“I need eleven grams, how much?”
“Well, seeing as how you’re the nicest strip club manager in the world and this is fine meth, how’s eight hundred?”
“Eight hundred?”
“Hell, you already got three free.”
“Good point,” Rich laughed as he pulled out the money.
“It’s almost all broken up, Rich, you can tell the girls.”
“Fuck no. They already know you’re here. I told them they can’t come back here until five.”
Jonathan put the last bit of meth into a bag, was happy to find it one gram over and put all the bags back into the velvet bag.
“What is that, velvet? That’s nice,” joked Rich in the voice of a stereotypical, elderly Jew.
Jonathan didn’t laugh as he stuffed the velvet bag into the crotch of his pants. Rich laughed nasally.
“That’s the best way I’ve seen to get one of these bitches in your pants.”
“I’ll leave you to your office. By the way, I love what you’ve done to the place,” said Jonathan, pointing to the calendar on the wall.
“Fuck you.”
Strip clubs are interesting places from a sociological standpoint. Because sociologists may spend as much time in strip clubs as do drug dealers, it’s fair to say some sociologists may know a great deal on the subject. Jonathan had never met a sociologist so naturally, he never had received the opinion of a sociologist regarding anything, least of all strip clubs. Lowmire, however, had opinions of his own.
Jonathan Lowmire had known at least thirty strippers intimately over the last few years. He had found some common similarities between them. Every stripper he knew had in some way been abused in the past. All the strippers he had met were insecure in some way, yet felt their beauty wielded power—a power that strippers used to compensate for a lack of self-esteem and intelligence. Almost every stripper Lowmire had met used drugs excessively, however, that would be an unfair stereotype because he was a drug dealer and therefore prone to hanging out with drug users.
Lowmire’s knowledge did not keep him from enjoying complementary drinks as bubbly young women rubbed fake breasts all over him, called him by name and pawed at his crotch. He knew why they loved him and never let himself be deluded into thinking they had any feelings for him whatsoever. Much like Lulu, the strippers only wanted to be fed.
The life was simple: drug dealers slept with strippers. Exotic dancers all assumed that they were actually using their bodies to get drugs. Ironically, all the drug dealers felt they were getting sex for the drugs. At any rate, everybody felt like they got a good deal. In truth, however, the strippers gave up something they hardly valued while the drug dealers gave up something less than profits.
“Jonathan, its five o clock,” whispered Genie as Lowmire caressed her thigh with a five-dollar bill.
She looked like a little porcelain angel—a porcelain angel stripped of her wings and set free on a smoky stage of purchased arousal.
Lowmire looked at his watch.
“Guess I better get to work,” he said.
For the next hour, Lowmire distributed fourteen grams of crystal meth (keeping one for his own personal stash). He had achieved a total profit of a few thousand dollars in less time than one shift at McDonald’s. Each stripper came in one by one; all of the women tried for free drugs, offering sex, massages, blow jobs—one even cried. Lowmire didn’t budge. He was a businessman.
But there was Genie.
He lit up a joint and smoked it with naked Genie after selling his product. Her perky saline-filled breasts and big blue eyes beautified an ugly room. Lowmire passed Genie a lit joint and cut out four lines of meth onto the metal desk. He didn’t even bother with the mirror.
“You know, Jonny. I wanta ask you something,” said Genie after tooting a line of meth off the desk. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Excuse me, Genie?”
“Well, three fucking nights away,” she hit the joint. “I mean a week. Three fucking nights a week, you come into this club and sell, sell a whole bunch of crank and then you disappear. You’re never at any of the parties for more than a few hours and when you are you just sell drugs, fuck somebody and leave. What up with that home boy?” she giggled.
Lowmire looked with fear and awe at the little blonde. The freckles on her face made her look so innocent and sweet. With her straight, small white teeth and her petite frame, she appeared harmless. She was however, in Lowmire’s opinion, dumb and dangerous—a bad combination.
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Stick around and have fun, Silly. Why don’t you like having fun?”
“You want to hear the truth?”
“Yeah,” she said and sat on his lap.
Lowmire tooted another line, rubbed his right hand up her naked thigh and said, “The truth is, I don’t exist, so I can’t really get to know people.”
She offered a disbelieving look.
“Three years ago, I paid a computer hacker to put a false name and social security number in the system. He did it. I went up to the DMV and got a fake license that said I was twenty-one.”
“You’re lying,” she slapped him on the shoulder.
“No, I’m not.”
Damn, thought Lowmire, this is good crystal. He was speaking very quickly
“I’m really an eighteen year old high school student.”
“Funny,” she said. “I’m not that dumb.”
“You remember the first time we fucked, Genie?”
“Well,” Genie looked puzzled for a moment. “Wait a minute, yeah, we fucked in DD’s atrium. Oh yeah, it was beautiful. The sun was shining in and we got all dirty and—“ she trailed off for a few minutes and stared at the ceiling, then watched Lowmire finish the joint before saying, “you, you left me because you had something to do around noon. You left one of the most bitching barbecues in the world. Hell, you helped pick out the steaks.”
“I went home and slept because I had to start a baseball game for my high school that day.”
“You play baseball?”
“Not anymore.”
“Oh my God,” she said. “You are a high school student.”
Lowmire laughed confidently and watched her expression change from one of unbelievable interest like a child at story time to complete frustration like a child attempting complex quantum physics.
“You asshole,” she hit him on the shoulder again. “Why you gotta’ lie to me, homeboy?”
“Because homegirl, its fun.”
“I’ll show you fun,” she said and she kissed him on the lips.
Genie had Lowmire’s penis in his mouth as he sat and stared at the ceiling when Rich opened the door.
“Hey, Man. Everybody out.”
“Cool, Rich,” said Lowmire.
“Yeah, cool rich,” said Genie from beneath the desk.
“I should have been a fucking chiropractor like my father,” said Rich as he closed the door.
Genie came up from beneath the desk.
“My boyfriend is a chiropractor,” she giggled. “Ain’t that ironic?”
“Yeah,” said Lowmire, though it wasn’t.
Changing from Jonathan Lowmire to Ethan Lee was like trading in a Porsche for a pinto. He replaced his Mozart music with the sounds of a local radio station, took his money from Lowmire’s wallet, wadded it up and stuck it in his sock.
He drove the Lexus nimbly like a responsible teenager with Daddy’s new car.
When he pulled over for gas he put his Lowmire wallet in the trunk. He then called Mario, received the answering service and left a request for the same order as the previous evening. Ethan knew Mario would be upset at his poor estimating, but the boss would be pleased with the fast sales.
Five minutes later, the Lexus was parked behind an abandoned historical landmark. Ethan flipped up the cover on his cell phone and called Joe.
Joe Corolla glanced at the Caller ID readout on his Nextel cell phone.
“Turn that shit off,” yelled Steve from the next bed over.
“Yeah,” said Darby, trying to sleep in the same bed with Joe.
“It’s my boy. I’m sorry.” Joe answered the phone. “What up Ethan? Let me guess: you need a ride from the old house. Yeah, I’m there.”
Joe hung up.
“Darby, Mary, I’ll be back before checkout.”
No one replied.
Joe Corolla sometimes wondered why the hell he became friends with Ethan lee. Years ago, when they were children, Joe had saved Ethan from getting his ass kicked in a junior high fight. Ethan had been a geek, focusing all of his life on grades, being better than the other students and working out. But Ethan had also been on Joe’s baseball team, The Warriors. If there was one thing Joe’s washed up alcoholic of a father had taught him it was the value of loyalty to a teammate.
“Teammates,” Old Man Corolla had said behind a cloud of cigar smoke. “Are like the closest thing you little shits will ever have to a war buddy. Stay loyal and stay strong. You’re stronger when you’re with them and they are stronger when you’re loyal.”
As much of a rambling mess as that statement had been, it still held true today. Joe was loyal to Ethan not just for the free drugs, the gas money and the popularity, but because Ethan would kill for Joe. That meant something. Many of the kids who grew up in the suburbs had precisely no idea what it meant to keep your mouth shut, never rat and stay loyal. The value of beating the shit out of a friend’s enemy solely because said person is a friend’s enemy hardly existed in the suburbs. But it existed between Joe Corolla and Ethan Lee.
For these reasons, Joe picked up and dropped off Ethan. For the same reasons, Ethan offered Joe a fifty-dollar bill.
“I’m alright. I don’t need your money,” said Joe.
“Oops,” Ethan dropped the fifty by Joe’s feet. “Dammit, I gotta go.”
Joe watched with admiration as Ethan walked around the side of his house without looking back.
Corolla picked up the fifty, put it in his shirt pocket, then hurried to the hotel, lest he miss the morning sex.
Ethan, home after sunrise, was not surprised to find Lulu sitting on his porch with a hungry look in her black eyes. After walking inside, removing some leftover stir fry and setting it outside, Ethan poured himself three shots of rum, downed them all in succession, then fell asleep without taking off his clothes.
Mental note, he thought, church in twelve hours.