Pinky Swear
Lawn darts, cocaine, crooked dentists — and destiny
It was very uncharacteristic of me to blow lines recreationally, but this badass skirt really flipped gravity on me. She was like a little Egyptian mischief goddess, with a smile full of endless teeth, and eyes like the devil’s concubine. Wake up, she’s shoving a bump under my nose. Good morning fuck, another bump, then out the door with my head spinning, the world trying to keep up.
She called me up on Thursday and asked me to get us some white girl for Friday night, so we could do some special things with each other, under the starry skies, right there in the fucking park. Spring was breaking out everywhere and the air was humming with mysterious and ancient vibrations. It was a very good yet very precarious time in my life, and sometimes I would find myself running around all crazed, from equal measures of love and fear. I was afraid, sometimes, of turning into a churchyard statue if I stood still for too long. Perpetual motion would keep my brain away from the insidious, chemical bear traps They had synthesized for my blood type.
I went looking in some of the usual places for my guy. The sun was ripening in the sky, and as I dragged around the south side of the city, I half expected God to reach down His arm, to reclaim the glowing, burning fruit that anchored our solar system, to consume it for His lunch.
After an interminable trek, Johnny Wawa was eventually located standing in front of 7–11, which made sense in a spectacularly nonsensical way. His tale was a sad one, where my expected cocaine was concerned. Apparently, stickup kids hit Johnny on his way to make a big drop off at the pool hall. The guys down at the social club weren’t buying it. They assumed it was some typical, manufactured Johnny Wawa-style, Grade A bullshit. Well, it appeared that my main man since kindergarten, the dude who once pissed in my closet while sleepwalking and then cried when my mom yelled at him, the dude who starting selling weed way back in our Little League days, the dude with a restraining order against him from the fucking Geisha house, the homey, the amigo numero uno, Johnny fucking Wawa, the deadbeat legend, would not be getting any more gak on the front.
Personally, I made him for a dead man, but he seemed to lack concern. I could see he was fucking trashed on xans or k-pins, and his garbled speech was a cause of great annoyance and displeasure. His movements were those of a man trying to box an octopus underwater, in slow motion. I would have to look elsewhere. I bid him good day, and prayed for his safe passage through the gauntlet of our fallen city.
I sat around aimlessly, stressed out, my thoughts consumed by my little lady-in-waiting. I said fuck it, and made the call I had been avoiding. My dentist acquaintance, Dr. Cory Haimowitz, was sitting on a significant quantity of high-grade blow. There was one obstacle…he had been begging me for weeks to be his partner in an upcoming, high-stakes lawn darts tournament.
I was a known lawn darts ace, having travelled extensively in the underground European lawn darts circuit in my early 20’s. Romance and lust, intrigue and revenge, death and dishonor…all had come to pass in the wake of my time as the world’s most notorious playboy in all of lawn darts. The last years on the circuit were a whirlwind. I married into royalty, briefly, and then divorced, into exile, and disgrace. It was a dramatic timeline I had left in the past without so much as one backwards glance. Dr. Haimowitz knew this, but to no consequence. He was a ruthless, single-minded kind of bastard, and I loved and hated him for it.
Back in high school, I dated Dr. Haimowitz’s niece for a year. Sadly to report, I broke Jilly Haimowitz’s heart. There were tears involved…and another girl. Dr. H and some Jewish mafia old boys took me to the basement of a synagogue and neatly, precisely amputated the tip of my pinky finger with a scalpel. After a few glasses of scotch and a long discussion, we all shook hands and amicably parted ways. I didn’t even miss the big wrestling match that weekend. I won all three matches, with a well wrapped bandage covering my “lawnmower accident.”
Two hours after making the call, almost against my will, I found myself uptown, sitting in a dentist’s chair, waiting for the good Doctor to join me. Dr. Haimowitz conducted himself like a fine Swiss watch, cold and calculated, meticulous and severe. He was a calm man, with a reputation for nonchalant violence. Savagery without malice.
I lounged back in the chair, listening to faint, piped-in Frank Sinatra songs sift out of tinny-sounding speakers in the ceiling. My mind was fighting to stay blank and clean like a newly-renovated kitchen. Think imported marble countertops. Ostrich-leather upholstery on the little breakfast booth. Fly me to the moon. Let me play among the stars. Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars.
Dr. Haimowitz seemed to teleport into the room. He appeared over my shoulder, greeting me in his usual toneless, breathless delivery. Hello Reginald, wonderful to see you. Zero enthusiasm. The antipathy of a well-fed snake towards a rabbit. I absolutely hated for anyone to call me Reginald, especially this fucking creepy, coke-sniffing old Jewish mafia-dentist that still had part of my pinky in his possession…bronzed, actually, in his office, sitting on his desk as a paperweight. Dr. Haimowitz kept a lot of “trophies” like that laying around. A real sentimental guy.
Anyway, my name is Reggie. Never, ever motherfucking “Reginald.”
My trepidation faded, and was replaced by a kind of recklessness that only the truly fucked-in-the-head are capable of summoning. My brain askew, I sat up in the chair, leaned on my elbow, and faced Dr. Haimowitz. I asked him something like, what kind of sick motherfucking dental office has fucking Frank Sinatra music playing at low fucking volume?
I realized it was probably a good idea to walk back my callous, aggressive question a little bit, so I offered a fool’s wide-eyed grin to the man, to present myself as a harmless jester. I merely wished to get some blow on the front, not become the recipient of torture from quiet, soulless pastrami-loving gangsters. Before I could further deprecate myself to demonstrate my level of utter harmlessness, Dr. Haimowitz answered my rhetorical question with a thoughtful response. His eyes looked slightly upwards, at his water-damaged drop ceiling while he spoke. What he said to me was unsettling, and it reminded me that serial killers shop at supermarkets, and make deposits at banks, and hold the door for old ladies at convenience stores.
He played Frank Sinatra for specific reasons of personal entertainment and pleasure. Loves the different eras of Frank, from crooner to rat pack to lounge singer well into self-parody. Fun to picture the changing landscape of America through the lens of Frank’s music. Chronicler of city life, love, youth and changing of the seasons. Man and woman. At a faint volume, Frank’s voice has audible effects that upset the ear drums and nasal passages of many listeners, especially those holding their mouths wide open, like for dental visits. Makes it harder to breathe. Slight microdose of torture. Fucking psychopath.
Bad business does not always involve money. It can involve dishonor, as I had found out in my more reckless, younger years. At that point, however, I wasn’t sure I had actually even seemed what amounted to respectable, good business.
An hour later I walked out of the good Doctor’s office feeling like a reanimated corpse of an ascetic saint. My nerves felt filed down by an invisible artisan of the early morning fog, a myth from the Old Country. Anyway, I negotiated a goddamn deal, got a huge chunk of nosejoy on the front, with the promise of more after the lawn darts tournament.
An hour after that, though, shit was completely flipped. I found myself driving out of town in my Camaro. The coke was in the possession of the now grateful and gangly Johnny Wawa. He might not have a chance, but neither did I, the more I thought I was just more self-aware. I decided to blow off the impending cocaine sex party date with the sultry female eagerly awaiting my phone call. There would be others.
I was heading out for parts unknown. Who knows, might go visit my old man, sitting and sweating in his condo down A.C., waiting for the summer people to come down and rile him into pleasant annoyance. Or maybe even break west, in search of pretty ladies and good times to continually bestow youth upon an aging hustler like yours truly. Either way, I knew I wasn’t playing no fucking lawn darts with a guy who chopped my finger off.
“Some people get their kicks from cocaine…”