Alice & Dorothy (22 page)

“
Yo Rabbit!
”

“
Jesus—fuck is stinks in here—Holy shit!
”

Rabbit slowly opened one lazy eye and rested it on the two large dark figures standing in his living room.

“Rabbit, what the fuck,
niggah?
You get jacked?”

“
Yeah
,” Rabbit said slowly. “
Bitch hit me in the mouf wif the fuckin’ thing
...” he waved a hand, dismissing them, and drifted away from the conversation.

“
Torlet lid
? Fuck man, a bitch did you like that?”

“
Yesh
,” Rabbit said. He opened his eyes again. He knew the two men, he realized. Two regulars, Devon and Eazy. Big, strong, healthy looking black men. They were his friends. They’d never hurt him. They were his boys. They worked for him, and he paid well for their services. More often than not, he paid them in drugs. Especially Eazy.

“Jesus man, look at his face,” Eazy said. “Hey Rabbit! Are
all
your teeth busted?”

“I
fink
so,” Rabbit said. he brought his fingers to his lips. there was dried blood and tooth shards all over the lower half of his face, like broken M&M shells filled with gore and nerve endings. Or eggshells. They kinda felt like a mouth full of eggshells too. “
Yesh
,
all da front onesh are gone.
” He reached down into the ashtray and pulled his mangled, bloody gold tooth grill out of the ashes, holding it up for them to see.

“That’s messed up,” Devon said. “Christ I think I’m gonna puke.”

“
It was Alish
,” Rabbit said, tossing the dental appliance aside. It rattled on the coffee table and broken teeth came loose. They spilled out around ashes and gold wires, and when they stopped moving they were sitting in little pools of blood like white ants drowning in cherry syrup. “
Her and her little bitch friend did it
.”

“That skinny bitch?” asked Eazy. “You sleepin’ or somet’in?”

“
I wash fighting with the other one. Didn’t she it comin’
.”

Rabbit took a couple deep breaths. He had to clear his head a bit more if he was going to figure this out. Now that Devon and Eazy were here he could get them to look for the girls. They were basically paid thugs anyway, and he knew he could have them if he promised some free junk.

And he
did
have to get that brick back. Soon. If Alice started dipping into it she might overdose again, and with nobody to help her the best Rabbit could hope for was her death. At worst, she’d end up back in the hospital, and his dope ended up in some precinct lockup while they pushed on those girls about where the brick came from.

Which would lead them to Rabbit’s grandma’s house.”
We need to find thoshe bitches
,” Rabbit said. He quickly rehashed the details of the past few hours, being careful not to mention exactly
how much
heroin the girls had stolen. No sense getting the dogs all worked up over something they couldn’t have. When he finished explaining everything, he picked up a cigarette, winced, and then slowly put it down again. “So you in?”

Devon and Eazy looked at each other. “Yeah,” Eazy said. “Sure as Christ. Got any idea where you wanna start lookin’?”

Rabbit thought about that. He didn’t really know where Alice went when she wasn’t at his house. He knew she fucked for money, so she must have had some regular hangouts, but Rabbit didn’t normally concern himself with where she went to make a buck. And to be honest, he kind of hadn’t
wanted
to know until today. He thought she might have mentioned a room somewhere before, but there was too much fog behind his eyes to recall the conversation exactly. Something about a moon? or the Fall? Full Moon? It made sense, for a flophouse to be named after being bare ass naked with your ass up.
Should have called it the bicycle stand,
he thought.
Bury your head in the sand and stick your ass in the air so you can park your bike between the ass cheeks.

No, that was stupid. It wasn’t the Full Moon. It was something like that though....

“
Hey!
” Devon snapped his fingers in front of Rabbit’s face. “Yo, wake up man!”

“I’m awake,” Rabbit said.
Am I though? Maybe this is all some stupid dream
. He rubbed his hands on his swollen face but stopped short of his mouth.

“
He’s Jesus Juiced
,” Eazy said. “He needs to have a nappy nap.”

“Naw,” Devon said. “You was mumblin’ something about bein’ bare assed. What the fuck are you talkin about?”

And suddenly it came to Rabbit, like a lighthouse beam through the fog.

“
Shit!
” he cried. “
My shell phone!
”

He felt his pockets. It wasn’t there. He looked around his couch, in the cushions. He started to get up but his legs failed him and he crumpled back into his seat. He cursed his useless state and tried again.

Alice had called him a couple times last week, and if they were lucky enough one of them might have been from her hotel. She went there when the weather was bad. Something Moon something.

“
Where the fuck is it?
” He yelled, and lightning flared in his mouth. He grabbed the side of his face.

“
FAWK
!”

Devon slapped Eazy’s chest.

“Call it man,” he said.

“
YESH!
” Rabbit barked. “
Call me and we’ll lishen for it. Good idea.
”

“‘Course it is,” Devon said.

Eazy pulled an iPhone out of his pocket, scrolled down his list of numbers and hit a button. Devon and Rabbit stopped dead. Rabbit’s ears were pounding in the silence, but a moment later MC Hammer started twittering about how you couldn’t touch it. The sound was coming from the hallway.

“Damn,” Eazy said.

“
Go get it!
” Rabbit said.

“Why you got this old shit on your phone?” Devon said. He walked into the hall. “Holy shit there’s blood all over the place. What the fuck happened over here?”

“
I beat her fuckin ash
,” Rabbit called out. “
But she snuck up on me when I wash gettin wif her friend
.”

Devon reappeared with the phone in his hand.

“You
need
to get rid of this old shit on your phone,” he said again.

“
Shut the fuck up
,” Rabbit said. He made a grab for the phone. “
Gimme that
.”

“I’m hangin’ up now,” Eazy said. “I don’t want my gramma showin’ up cuz she heard
Hammer
comin’ out of your phone
.
” Devon laughed, and the two men bumped fists.

Rabbit ignored them. He was flipping through his call history. Finally, near the end of his call list, the words BLUE MOON MOTEL appeared, and he pointed a finger at Eazy.

“
I got it,
” he said. “
You call, I can barely fuckin’ talk. Use your good guy voice. No thug shit.
”

“I’ll make them think it’s the king of fuckin’ England,” Eazy said, switching to a mock British accent. “Or Christ on the cross.”

“
Just sound like a normal human being
.”

“Now that’s impossible,” Devon said, and the two men laughed again.

“You got that right,” Eazy said.

They’re enjoying this too much,
Rabbit thought
. If I didn’t have a busted face they wouldn’t be fucking around this much.
”Get fuckin’ serious. You two are about to get bounced out on your ass.”

“Alright, alright,” Eazy said. He put his hands up in mock surrender.

“Yeah just chillax, boss,” Devon said. “You know we good people.”

Eazy turned, putting the phone to his ear. With his other hand he motioned the other two men for quiet. “Yes, Hello?” His voice bounced up an octave. All trace of his street accent disappeared. He sounded like he could be selling bibles or vacuum cleaners. “Is this the Blue Moon Hotel? It is.
Good
. Would you be able to tell me if a pretty little blond thing is down there?”

Eazy listened for a moment, then laughed. “Oh I’m sure. No we are supposed to meet up a little later and she said she was going to be there, but I forgot which room. I know I should really learn to write this stuff down. Name? Yeah, it’s Alice.”

Eazy grimaced in Rabbit’s direction, and started snapping his fingers frantically.

“Last Name?” he said in his false voice, staring hard at Rabbit.

“
Pleashansh
,” Rabbit mumbled, and a line of bloody drool ran down his chin. “Shit!
Pleashansh. PLEASANSH
.”

Eazy mouthed the word
WHAT
? He looked at Devon, but the other man just shook his head.

“What did you say?” he said to Rabbit.

“
PLEASHANSH
.” Rabbit said again, louder this time.

“Presents,” Eazy said, smiling. “Yeah, Alice Presents.”

“NO!” Rabbit started to yell then immediately put his hand to his mouth.

Eazy looked at him. “One second sir,” he said, then mouthed
WHAT?

Rabbit began spelling the letters out.

“
P...L...E...S...E...N...T...S. Pleashansh.”

“Pleasance,” Devon said.

“Sorry,” Eazy said. I must have read that wrong. “Alice Pleasance.” He cupped his hand over the phone. “He’s just checking the roster.”

“Good,” Devon said. “He better not take all damn day.”

Rabbit looked down at his rig for a lustful moment, then closed the tin and grabbed his smokes again. This time he had the smoke in his hands when he remembered how much it hurt to smoke.

“Yeah,” Eazy said. “Yeah, I’m still here.”

They ate cheeseburgers and licked the grease off their fingers. When they were finished eating, Dorothy set the empty food bag up on the dresser against the wall, at the foot of the beds. They took turns with their rolled up cheeseburger wrappers trying for baskets and discovered they were both terrible shots. So much so that finally Alice got up and slammed her wrappers into the bag and then tossed the entire mess into a small garbage can sitting on the floor by the television.

When she turned around Dorothy was watching her. The expectant stare unnerved her a little. Not because she didn’t like seeing that jubilant smile on Dorothy’s face, but because her mood had changed with a frightening suddenness that left Alice breathless. Was this the same girl who had been cowed into submissiveness by an attempted rape just a few hours before? It couldn’t be. Yet here she was, smiling, joking, and acting like nothing had happened. Alice herself was reeling from her fight with Rabbit. Her face was on fire, and the throb of the muscles beneath her skin was an echo of her heart. But not Dorothy. Even though she was sporting a similar purple bruise on her face and her nose was badly swollen, Dorothy seemed a million miles away from it all.

Why shouldn’t she be happy
, Alice thought.
She got what she wanted in the Gas Station bathroom. I’m all hers now
. The thought was ugly. Even her inner voice was angry and traitorous. Then she heard cackling in her ears like glass breaking, and she knew it wasn’t her voice at all.

“So,” she said.

“
So,
” Dorothy said, beaming at her.

“That was pretty crazy today,” she said quietly. She sat on the bed beside Dorothy.

“Oh my god!” Dorothy said. She was vibrating with her newfound energy. “That was a little more than crazy. That was
way
off the hook. I thought we were going to fuckin’ die.”

“I wasn’t worried,” Alice said. “I’ve known Rabbit a long time. He’s no killer.”
Not like I am, anyway. I wonder what you’d think if you knew you were sitting beside a monster, sweet thing.

“If it’s one thing I’ve learned watching T.V., it’s that anyone is capable of anything, under the right circumstances. Your old Grandma could kill someone if she had to.”

“That’s how it is, hey?” Alice said. “I guess television never lies.”
What do you know? You know nothing.

“Well, I’m just saying that people do what they have to so they can survive. I’m sure if someone was trying to kill me I could muster the balls to do something about it.”

“Oh yeah?” Alice said coldly. She didn’t like the way the conversation had turned. It was too close to reality. Too much like her life.

Scrape her pretty face into that burger bag so we get the fuck out of here.

“I’d blow their head off, or set ‘em on fire or something, I don’t know,” Dorothy said. “Drop a fuckin house on them.”