6- All Out Of Love

             "You know what I always wondered, Laird?" asked Tim Tim as he bounced up and down on the trampoline in the courtyard while smoking a cigarette at the same time. He was wearing a leather jacket with the sleeves cut off, a T-shirt for some minor league baseball team in Scranton, and a pair of polka dot boxer shorts which hung on his narrow hips like a tent on a pole, billowing out with the wind when he went up and flipping and flapping around his skinny thighs on his way down.        

He wasn't sober.

            "What's that, Tim Tim?"  I was sitting in a lawn chair in my swim trunks by the empty pool, reading a book and trying to work up a free tan.

            "How come they never arrested Angela Lansbury in Murder She Wrote."

            I looked up from my book, short stories about baseball by W.P. Kinsella, and asked him, "You mean the show about the mystery writer who solved crime?"

            "Yo, that's just the thing, Laird, man," he said, real serious.  "You're going to tell me that this old broad rolls around from place to place, New England, California, Maine, and everywhere she goes, somebody happens to drop?"

            I rolled my eyes.  "You think that means she killed some of them?"

            Tim Tim came to a slow, bouncing stop on the tramp and hopped down onto his bunny slipper clad feet and came at me, taking a long, savoring drag off that smoke.  "Dude, you even listening to me?  She killed all of 'em.  Only thing that makes sense."

            "For material?"

            "Shit yeah, for material," he said.  "What else you think she was writing books about?  Shit, my man, only thing people write books about is the shit they know all about, and how else is Angela fucking Lansbury gonna know all about murder unless she's dropping mother-fuckers left and right?"

            Tim Tim was on the street when he was thirteen.  The story isn't even all that interesting.  Drunk father, ineffectual, cheating mother.  Gunshot wound to the head for her, twenty five to life in prison for him, and foster homes for the just about orphaned little boy.  Foster mother thought he was the child she always wanted and never could have.  Foster father thought he was the missing piece in a life full of unfulfilled desires and sexual frustration.

            He looked at the boy, and Tim Tim was a pretty cute kid.  He had anal sex with the wife and tried oh so hard not to call her Timmy.  It wasn't hard to figure out exactly where the story was going to go.  So Tim Tim was (maybe) fifteen and on the street for two or three years and staying in a small apartment, which was procured by his "agent" in the same complex as my little piece of shit place to live.  Twenty-four low rent apartments in Queens, not too far from Shea Stadium, composed of one bedroom, one bathroom, a small kitchen, three closets, a living room and a community laundry room, the machines in which cost a quarter a try.  $350 a month and bad plumbing.  Home sweet home.

            At least there was a pool.  No water, but a pool.  Inside that dried up, mildewed pool is where Tim Tim kept his trampoline.  And in the afternoon, when he was finally awake, if he wasn't off on a call, the odds were, that was where you'd find him.

            "Do you think that's how they wrote the show?" I asked, putting down Kinsella.

            Tim Tim's mouth curled up tightly and his eyes rolled up to the top of their sockets.  He told me that if you get these people, the ones who created this thing alone for like five minutes, they'd tell you that's the way they'd have ended the show if only the network would have let them.

            "It's fucking corporate politics, man."

            I laughed at him.  "You're fifteen, what the fuck do you know about corporations?"

            He shrugged and plucked a Newport from a crumpled pack in the inside pocket of his jacket, dexterously flipped open a Zippo and lit the cig.  He took a long tug on it and let out a quick break of smoke.  "Who knows anything about anything, right?  You got a car, Laird?"

            I shook my head.  "Kid, you know I don't have a car."

            Tim Tim took another drag.  "A john I met like last year offered to buy me a car, you know."

            "Oh yeah?" I asked, feeling my stomach tighten.

            "It's true," he said, crumpling up his pack of smokes and tossing it to the ground.  His non-cigarette hand was tugging at the fly of his shorts.  "Guy said I was 'special' and that I should have a ride that reflected that I was special.  I don’t have a license, but it’s nice to be, you know, ‘special.’"

            I was now standing at the edge of the pool and he was hoisting himself up out of the shallow end.  "What happened to the car?"

            "I don't know," he said.  "He didn't come around any more after that."  Tim Tim shook his head.  "Sometimes I think he stopped coming just because he felt bad not being able to produce the car."

            I nodded. 

            "Do you want to walk down to Wicker's with me and buy a pack of smokes?"
            I nodded at his attire.  "You going to put on a pair of pants?"
            Tim Tim smiled and looked down at himself.  He smelled like cheap bourbon.  I think it was the jacket.  "Nah, man, this is a good look for sales."

            The tiny grocery about four blocks down, and since I didn't have a car, we walked on the hottest day of the summer.  Tim Tim was standing by the freezer doors, looking at some Ben and Jerry's.  "Shit, Laird, why is Ice Cream so fucking expensive."  I said I didn't know, and I sidled up next to him, and I took out a small carton of Chunky Monkey and I held it against my forehead.  Ecstasy.  Ninety-five degrees and humid.  The guy at the counter had a fan.  The rest of the place felt like Hiroshima on the wrong day.  Tim Tim had made his way up the cooler doors to where the beer was.  He took out a six pack of Sam Adams and looked at me with a smile.

            There were days when I had seen Tim Tim hide everything smaller than a television in that leather jacket of his.

            He deftly slipped the six bottles, one by one by one, into his pockets and then made his jingling way calmly up to the desk, me close in tow behind him with my ice cream.

            "Pack of Newport please," Tim Tim said with a thousand watt smile.

            The counter man, a balding Greek in a wife-beater with a "don't fuck with me" expression that looked fucking tattooed on his face, asked to see some ID.

            Tim Tim, smiling away, produced Joseph Martin Shoffler's driver's license.  The counterman took a look at the ID which said that my man was twenty-two as of fifteen days before, and then a long, long look at Tim Tim.

            "You're twenty-two?"

            "And fifteen days," Tim Tim said standing up straight, puffing out his chest with pride.

            This counterman, this sweaty, bald, 250 pounds of meat and hair with a beard that was damn near behind every counter, in every corner store like the convenience store clerk cloning machine got stuck on the setting for bearded, bald, hairy, fat, asshole. He looked at this skinny, five-foot-seven kid and said, "Shoffler, huh?  You related to Lee Shoffler?  Owns a shooting range up in Astoria?"
            "Yeah," said Tim Tim with a confident smile.  "That's my uncle."

            The Greek leaned over the edge of the counter, pack of smokes in one hand, ID in the other.  "Come here, kid," he said in a hushed voice.

            Tim Tim leaned in, and by now he had to have been close enough to smell the booze on the kid.

            "Kid," he said, "I don't know anything about shooting ranges or Shofflers or anything like that, but I can spot a fourteen year old kid with a fake ID three miles away."  He sniffed.  "Especially one who washes his clothes in cheap whiskey."

            Tim Tim smiled.  "So you're not going to sell me the smokes?"

            The counterman smiled.  "I'll sell 'em to you if you're willing to pay ten bucks for the pack."

            "Uh, Joe," I said, a hand on Tim Tim's shoulder, "why don't I just buy the pack for you?"

            Tim Tim turned to me and laughed .  "Dude, it's not like I can't afford it."

            He handed over the ten bucks and we were on our way with an over-priced pack of cigarettes, my half pint of Chunky Monkey, and six bottles of pilfered beer.  We walked back, Tim Tim puffing on a smoke, me eating my ice cream with a plastic spoon I'd gotten from the counterman, wrapped in cellophane with a napkin like the silverware you get on an airplane. 
            "What have you got planned for the night?" Tim Tim asked me through a puff of blue smoke.

            "I don't know," I said.

            "I have a gig, could be a high roller.  You want in?"

            Again I felt tight in my stomach.  "I don't know.  I'm not really up to it."

            Tim Tim shook his head and laughed.  "See, Laird, man, this is why I can't very well have you buying me cigs.  You don't got any ambition."

            I let him grab the ice cream from me and take a few spoonfuls.  "Man, why don't you let me hook you up with Raymond?"

            The sun was at the top of the sky, and it was beating down on the Earth, furious.  "I don't want a pimp, Tim Tim."

            "How many times have I told you," he says to me, real serious-like, "he's not a pimp.  He's a manager.  Dude, it's steady work.  I mean you're skin of your teeth right now since Getch cut you off.  This guy gets me enough gigs so that I can live in the style to which I am accustomed," he said, tugging on his leather.  "You done with this?" he asked, holding up the Ben and Jerry's, and I nodded.  He tossed it on the way into the gate and took out a beer.

            "Want one?"

            I did.  I cracked open the beer using the bottom lip of a Bic cigarette lighter and took a long swallow.  It was hot and I was sweating.  I couldn't believe that under all that leather jacket, thick with pockets and stolen beer and God even knows what else, Tim Tim didn't have so much as a drop of moisture on his forehead.  Even still, he drank thirstily from his beer.

            I found Kinsella, still sitting beside the lawn chair, the bookmark about halfway through the book.  Tim Tim set the remaining four beers on the ground and jumped down into the pool.  He drank down the rest of his and hopped up onto the trampoline, bouncing up and down on his knees and on his back and on his ass.  At fifteen years old and less than 110 lbs, I think he was pretty drunk.

            "You heading inside?" he asked.

            Yeah, I told him.  I had some shit to do.  I was lying.

            "Take a few of those beers if you want," he said.  "I drink 'em all and I'm just gonna get sick."

            "Thanks, man."

            I headed up the stairs with two more beers and my book, and Tim Tim was singing in a cracked voice, “I’m all out of love…I’m so lost without…you.  I know you where right….believing for so looooong…..”

            He stopped and called after me.  “Hey, think about tonight, man.  Good money.”

            I closed the door and walked over to my couch and cracked open the book, Tim Tim still singing outside. He’d changed his tune. It was now Turn Me Loose by Loverboy. Although each time Tim Tim bounced to the highest point on the trampoline, he added another “Turn me loose” to the song, until the rest of the lyrics had fallen to the wayside. Now, he was simply reaching the zenith of every bounce chanting, “Turn me loose”.

            I put the book down, drowsy now. Not so much from Tim Tim’s trampoline lullaby, but more so because I wasn’t sleeping very well these days. I’d never been particularly good at falling asleep. I’d never had the knack of turning my brain off long enough to fall asleep without simply lying in bed and staring at the walls and the ceiling. Some folks, once their heads hit the pillow, they’re out like a light; not me. It just never worked that way. Even as a child, I needed a little something extra to get me to nod off, back then it was a warm glass of strawberry Quik, now, it’s usually a cocktail of generic muscle relaxers and Benadryl or some painkillers...or something stronger- if I'm holding.

            I walked to the bathroom, opened up the medicine cabinet, avoided looking at myself in the mirror, and fished out whatever muscle relaxers I could find. I then made my way to the kitchen area, and found a small first aid kit with some left over Benadryl tablets in it. I downed a fist full of the pills with a slug of beer and lay back down on the couch. 

             I stared at the piss colored stucco ceiling; I traced lines between the bumpy little crests of plaster embossing. I made whatever order I could from the uneven plaster chaos. For awhile, I literally found myself looking for the face of Jesus in the stucco, tracing patterns, hoping that I could be the guy on the news that claimed he saw Jesus in his shitty apartment plasterwork so I could start charging the fanatics admission to my rat-hole apartment to, “come and see the face of stucco Jesus!” No dice. Jesus wasn’t making any appearances. 

      Now, as the Benadryl and muscle relaxer mix took full affect, my eyes were heavy enough to close without forcing them to stay shut. As I dozed, I drifted to the sound of that voice, that odd voice, muttering softly in the back of my subconscious. That odd phrase...The Gateway, replaced, in cadence and tone, Tim Tim's bouncing serenade, and I fell asleep to the broken record like repetition of the words in my mind.