The Comedown Read online

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  He’d always imagined Caleb and Aaron would grow up different than he had, with money and cars and the carefree laughter of rich white kids whose biggest problem was choosing where to go to college. He and Tasha already had a private school picked out for them, a Catholic kindergarten where they’d be taught how to count and spell before they turned four. They’d grow up to be twin doctors or lawyers. They’d have barbecues when Reggie and Tasha got old, the boys charcoal-grilling chicken while their children ran around Reggie’s big backyard, Reggie telling some story about stealing soda or shoes or something as a kid, making his mother’s temper into something batty and not dangerous, his father’s drinking charming and not sad. The boys would laugh admiringly and Tasha would squeeze his hand. Caleb (he had always been more talkative) would say, “Dad, we’re so glad we didn’t have to deal with any stuff like that growing up.” And Aaron would laugh and nod, pull his little daughter up onto his shoulders while she screamed “I’m too tall, Daddy!” because she’d be scared of heights, but he’d be such a good father that she’d trust him anyway. And Reggie would say, “It’s true! Only in America could you start out like that and end up like this!” And Tasha would get her deep scholar’s voice on and tell him to stop being so goddamned patriotic about a terrorist slave state. She was too smart for him and he knew it but she loved him still. Thank God she loved him still.

  A car shot past him doing at least eighty if not ninety. Drunks shouldn’t be allowed to drive—he could say this from experience. All those nights when he was a kid sucking down Wild Turkey, cruising around with Cookie and those other guys from the block: Rell, Kingston, Daevon. Miracle he didn’t T-bone someone. Miracle he’d done all the things he’d done and still lived. He reviewed what he’d tell Sunny: he’d gone to the garage in Lakewood to find the guy Shondor wanted killed, found and killed him, hadn’t counted on the guy’s two friends being there. Then they’d tried to kill Reggie (specifically, Reggie scuffled with the one for his gun but ended up having to shoot him twice in the chest, then the other came at him with a knife, swiped hard at his arm, and tried to kneecap him but Reggie shook him off and killed him, too), and he’d done it all without leaving any evidence. They had clearly been foot soldiers, couldn’t even handle Reggie between the two of them. It was pathetic how lazy their operation was run. He lived minutes from Little Italy and nobody was trying to stop him from picking off greaseball pawns.

  Walking was easier as he got used to the pain. He passed the Cleveland Soapbox Derby track, its silver plaque looking blunt and knifelike without light to catch. He walked over the bridge above the flats, looked into the still-bright factory windows at the people in jumpsuits and goggles walking back and forth. One of them was looking out the window at him, and Reggie considered waving before the window went dark. It had to be at least ten o’clock, if not eleven. He had never understood how anyone kept a job like that: clocking in at nine in the morning or earlier, being forced to work overtime by a boss who wouldn’t pay extra. If there was a way out of that hustle, why not take it? Tasha was always telling him to have compassion for people who didn’t understand the boxes they were trapped in, and he tried to for her sake, but he couldn’t see how anyone wouldn’t want money if they had the chance to get it. Maybe people who’d always had it, people like the ones in Tasha’s graduate classes who kept criticizing the “greedy bourgeoisie” and saying the world needed a revolution led by the poets. Whatever the fuck kind of revolution they were trying to start, Reggie had been getting rich the whole time. He’d gotten hired instead of killed by Sunny: could a poet do that?

  He’d entered the city limits and none of the cars driving past him were slowing down to watch his crooked walk. When there was a gap in traffic he ran screaming in pain to the median, then ran from the median to the sidewalk and collapsed on the grass gasping, staring at the smoggy sky. The first time he’d kissed Tasha they’d been sitting on the Central Avenue bus headed east into the best sunset of his life, packed full of pinks and oranges and purples and blues: a sunset on acid. Tasha had told him Cleveland had sunsets like that because of all the factory fumes and he said that if he could watch sunsets like that for the rest of his life, he’d live right inside a steel factory, which made her roll her eyes and laugh. He knew he had her then, even though she was so far out of his league he couldn’t see where she was standing.

  He sat up and looked around him. A pack of drunk kids was walking up the street singing a song he didn’t know—a bullshit folk song, probably. One of them stepped aside and parted the curtain of his hair, staring right at Reggie. The kid nudged him with his foot. “Hey, man,” he said. Reggie lay back down. “Hey, man,” the kid said again, “bad trip?” Reggie could hear the other kids snickering. The kid nudged him again, and then the nudging became a little kick. This one’s lights are out, Reggie heard one of them slur, not the one who’d kicked him. He opened his eyes and now a girl was standing over him, white like the first kid, with worm-thin lips and fat cheeks. She laughed from deep in the back of her throat and made a sound like she was about to hock spit in his face. Instead he kicked her in the calves so she fell screaming to her knees, and when the long-haired one shouted “What the fuck?” and came at him, Reggie got to his feet in time to deliver a haymaker. Then he ran, the pain in his body gone, the kids screaming “Somebody call the police!” behind him. A helpless laugh escaped him as he ran. You really had to pity anybody stupid enough to believe in the police.

  Detroit and West Twenty-Eighth: pink neon flickering the words MASSAGES OPEN at him. He got out his key and jammed it in the knob and the door came open in his hand. He was inside; the curtains were drawn, the room was dark. The back-room light was off. He reached for the switch next to the door and the Christmas lights along the molding snapped on to reveal the velour chairs, the girls’ skirts and pasties laid out on the wood-and-leather tabletop, and, before he could even make sense of what he was seeing, the blinking red eyes of some wino. Reggie screamed and the intruder screamed, covering his face with a pair of raggedy-gloved hands. Reggie pulled the gun from his pants and cocked it, which made the man whimper “God no Reggie no.” And then Reggie realized it wasn’t a john or a wino: it was Leland Sr., the cokehead who always asked for Reggie by name.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” Reggie said. “Why are you here? How did you get in here?” Leland Sr. shrugged and started blubbering as if this were the first time he’d ever tried talking. The only time Reggie felt bad about what he did was when he started to notice junkies deteriorating. When he first met Leland Sr., he’d been a skinny hippie with a days-old beard and some scrap-metal job and a wife with a kid on the way. Reggie didn’t really pay attention to the people he met on the corner aside from how much money they had and whether they looked like liars, but Leland Sr. was like gristle in your teeth. He’d come up to Reggie and start talking and no matter how many times Reggie pushed him away his stupid ass would find a way back in an hour or two, yammering about how the president was a bitch and he couldn’t refinance the mortgage on his house and how “medicine” made him stronger. Eventually Reggie just gave in and listened, because some days he was kind of entertaining and there was no getting rid of him once he got going. But Leland Sr. was the kind of stupid that couldn’t take a hint, and he started to think he was Reggie’s best friend. As in, he invited Reggie to dinner with his wife in what Reggie assumed was going to be a nasty Glenville two-bedroom, probably all dust-motey, the carpet full of cat shit, to which Reggie said, “Seriously, man? You inviting your pusher to dinner?” And Leland Sr. made some joke about Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, which made Reggie’s skin crawl so much he slammed Leland Sr. in the jaw. The punch had knocked him down but he just stumbled up from the ground laughing, probably too numb to take a hint. Recently, Reggie would hide when he saw Leland Sr. coming, take a midafternoon hit if it meant avoiding Leland Sr.’s pasty speed-freak mouth.

  “I got in through the front door,” Leland Sr. said. “I p
icked the lock. We share a birthday today, remember? I wanted to wish you happy birthday.” Reggie threw his hands up. When did I tell this hebe weasel motherfucker about my birthday? he thought, but didn’t say it. Instead he spun around so he was looking Leland Sr. in his sad-sack face and said, “I have business to do, man. You gotta leave.”

  Now he could feel Leland Sr. taking him in, his whole jacked-up self, so he moved to the other side of the room and pretended to be busy sorting pasties. “What happened to you?” Leland Sr. asked, and Reggie said, “It’s better if you don’t know.” But Leland Sr. wanted to know—he was standing behind Reggie, breathing heavy on his neck, offering to fuck up whoever had fucked him up, until Reggie turned around and pushed him away. “I don’t need your punk ass helping me!” he shouted. “You acting like a faggot!” That last part shut him up. Leland Sr. apologized and held his hands folded in front of him like a singer in a church choir, saying he didn’t mean any harm, he was just getting desperate for a re-dose, his wife was making him see this headshrinker and it was driving him insane. “My whole goddamn life don’t revolve around you,” Reggie said. He began opening and rearranging the boxes on the shelf in front of him—water-damaged copies of Hustler and Penthouse mostly—hoping Leland Sr. would take the hint and just leave. But when he turned around the asshole was waving a hundred-dollar bill in his face. “I got this doing a favor for a guy at the Ford plant,” he said, like Reggie gave a fuck. He sighed and grabbed the money. “Let’s make this quick,” he said, and Leland Sr. nodded, his face now like an obedient dog’s. Reggie went downstairs to the basement, where the girls sometimes slept if they were going through a rough patch. There was one there that night, her greasy hair spun out sunray-style from her head, her face grimacing in sleep. Reggie would never think of touching one of them, but he knew the others did. He tiptoed past the girl to the safe in the back, opened the lockbox in the safe, and fished around for an eightball. Then he brought it upstairs and threw it on the table. “This is all we got left,” he lied. “You gonna have to break that bill or take what I give you.” Leland Sr.’s eyes got huge. He grabbed the bag, ripped it open, and dipped his pinkie inside. He snorted it up and did that two or three more times before his eyes got glassy and his head perked up on its grasshopper neck. “This feels Colombian,” he said, and Reggie shrugged. “Honestly, man, can I just stay here for a little bit?” Leland Sr. asked. “My kid is sick and my wife is gonna be sitting up with him and if you kick me out I’ll just go stand across the street.” Reggie made a sound like a bull snorting. What was stopping him from breaking this stupid motherfucker’s neck? He watched Leland Sr. do his sad little bumps. Outside a car rolled past slowly, bass pounding. There was something about him Reggie couldn’t understand. He hated him, but hurting him would feel like kicking a stray dog. He had a philosophy that the kind of person who deserved to be on the receiving end of a barrel was also the kind of person who’d been on the firing end, and Leland Sr. had never been on the firing end.

  “Just sit under the table,” he told Leland Sr. “And be quiet.” Leland Sr. started sputtering his thanks, offered as he always did to put himself on the corner if Reggie ever needed help. “Shut the fuck up, man,” Reggie said. “You make one sound and I’ll kill you.” He remembered his mother telling him he was a promise breaker and that was why she hated him. She was halfway out of her mind by then, weeks away from being hauled off by the police. She was standing over Reggie in the kitchen with a knife in her hand. She was freebasing by then, the rash across her nose bright red and scabbing. The knife was the one he’d seen her use to slice the turkey’s neck two Thanksgivings ago. Reggie was shaking in his undershirt, knees to his chin, tears down his cheeks. He was eight. He was asking into his knees, “Why am I a promise breaker?” He couldn’t help it, he just wanted her to tell him so he could fix it. But every time he spoke, the whites of her eyes got angrier and she said, “You promised to love me and you ain’t delivered on it!” Then she brought the knife down in the carpet in front of him and he jumped back and ran.

  Leland Sr. crawled under the table and Reggie bolted the front door, then unlocked the door to the back room and bolted that, too. He turned on the single lightbulb and the room blinked into focus. Clients sometimes met girls back here—if it was a slow night, Sunny would turn it into a private room and one lucky john would get to turn a girl out on top of Sunny’s mother’s old kitchen table. Right now the room was almost empty except for some old shoes stacked high enough against the wall to reach Reggie’s knees. He didn’t want to think about whom they belonged to.

  He sat down at the table and put his pistol in front of him. The clock on the wall said it was almost midnight. Reggie had been running late, but Sunny wouldn’t have come and then left without seeing him. The idea that he would’ve made Reggie sweat a little. There was no reason for Sunny to give him the money other than Reggie was loyal and everybody liked him. Even the assholes who did nothing but bust people’s faces for Shondor thought Reggie was pretty stand-up. He was family. For the first time in a long time, Reggie’s knee screamed out and he squeezed his thigh to distract from the pain. He could feel his chest turning in on itself like the hollow side of a spoon. Reggie thought of the girl trying to spit in his face and replaced it with a thought about his sons eating Cheerios. Caleb always picked them up one by one and Aaron just slammed handfuls into his mouth. He suddenly regretted not bringing up a dub bag from the vault for himself.

  The back door opened and Sunny came in holding the briefcase, which was stupidly canary colored and had all kinds of shit locking it up on top. Reggie was relieved that Sunny had shown, but his face looked like the stretched-back faces of those astronauts in the g-force machines on TV. “Hey,” Reggie said, and Sunny jumped and wailed, “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Reggie shook his head, trying to look like Don’t start something, but he could never look that way with Sunny. Sunny, who came across more as a needle-nosed accountant motherfucker than Shondor’s right-hand guy, with his button-down shirts and his high socks and the way he had of putting so much waxy shit in his hair it looked like he got it buffed at the car wash. Back when Reggie and Cookie were desperately pushing their own grass on Scovill and East Fifty-Fifth, Sunny had come up in a Cadillac one day to buy from them. Reggie, stupid kid that he was, agreed and got right in the passenger seat. Then Sunny had a gun in his ribs and as quick as he could Reggie whipped out his own gun and shot Sunny in the shoulder. He still remembered being terrified of the sound it made, and that little girl jumping rope outside the rec center who looked through the car window dead at him. And Sunny, who should’ve been weeping from pain, laughed. He’d looked from Reggie to the little girl and asked him who his boss was. That was the start of the whole thing.

  But now Sunny wasn’t looking the way he did in the car. He was small and sunken. Reggie was starting to feel sick: Sunny’s paler-than-pale face, his own throbbing knee, the lunatic babbling away in the next room. “Were you here earlier?” Reggie asked, and when he got no response: “Is that the money?” Sunny nodded, staring at a place in the wall past Reggie. “Yes what?” Reggie asked, but Sunny said nothing. Then he opened the briefcase on the table. The bills were two stacks deep and wide enough to fill the entire thing. “That’s it,” Sunny said, then sighed and closed it. “I’m supposed to be dead.” Reggie wanted to reach for the leather handle but held back. “What do you mean?” he asked, and Sunny began to cry. He thought it was a joke but the crying didn’t stop. “My wife and kids,” he said—Reggie had met all of them, Alma the Spanish girl and their two cinnamon babies, always squirming around, asking Uncle Reggie can we play Connect Four? He was surprised Sunny was capable of a woman like that, but then Sunny surprised everyone.

  “Your wife and kids what?” But Reggie didn’t really want to ask. Sunny shook his head and sucked his teeth. “Blown up in my car,” he said, and shuddered so hard Reggie thought for a second he was having a stroke. “Blown up outside the dentist’s.” They both s
at still, but Reggie could feel the room getting smaller. “It was meant for me,” Sunny said. Reggie didn’t hear much past “blown up.” His first thought was to go home. Go home immediately: run if he had to. Fuck the money. But his second thought was, Get the money, then go home. He latched onto the briefcase handle but Sunny shook him off. “You’re supposed to be dead, too,” he said. “He’s liquidating. He doesn’t trust anyone anymore. I’m not supposed to have this briefcase still.” Reggie wanted to know what the fuck it meant to liquidate a business like this but it didn’t really matter. He tried again to grab the briefcase but Sunny shook him off, hard. “Come on, man,” Reggie said, “I did the job, now give me the money.” But Sunny was pacing back and forth, making these little hiccup noises. “He’s basically my father,” he kept saying. “He can’t do this to me.” Then he stopped. “I love him like a father,” he said, staring Reggie dead in the face, his eyes huge and vacant. And then he brought what Reggie recognized as his favorite Beretta to his own temple. Reggie was on his feet, saying “Holy shit holy shit.” He got the gun out of Sunny’s hands and held it away from him. “Stop it!” he said, and then Sunny’s little man-boy frame fell into Reggie’s arms as he wailed. “You’re so stupid,” he said into Reggie’s shirt. “It was supposed to be three guys there today. You’re supposed to be dead. You know how I know that? I planned it. Shondor told me to.” Reggie held him up and said, “You and me can get away. You got the money, I got a car, you can come with me and my family.” Sunny snorted, the old laugh he did when one of the guys said something really stupid. “You seen too many movies,” he said. “I’d rather be dead than be alive without my wife and kids.” Then Reggie’s jaw went crooked and he didn’t feel any of the pain until he hit the ground and realized Sunny had punched him.