NOW AVAILABLE — Marty’s new short story collection, When Paris Beckons
From “Carlos and Almond Head
Cruise Eastern Parkway”
I guess I knew I was in way over my head the night Carlos and Almond Head yelled “fuck you” to the Caribbean guy in the heavy Chevy. The guy pulled alongside of us at the red light on Franklin, leveled his shotty out the open window of his Monte Carlo, and told us to run our pockets.
And yet Carlos just smiled that big stupid smile. Almond Head, so named because of his asymmetrically-shaped skull, laughed. Soca Boy, though, he wasn’t laughing. I got a weird cold quiver in my bowels, like when I eat tuna salad from the corner Korean guy in the middle of summer, and I know I have about a minute before it all blows.
Carlos revved the engine of his sixty-eight Olds Cutlass 442. We booked, zero to sixty in the flick of a spliff, tires squealing, and we shot right through every red light on Eastern Parkway until we got to the arch at Grand Army Plaza. Soca Boy in the Monte Carlo, with the black and red Trinidadian flag waving from his antenna and Mighty Sparrow booming on the stereo, was gone from the rear view mirror.
“Fuckin guy, man,” Carlos said, shaking his head in disbelief. He shook a Marlboro Red from a soft pack on the dash, just behind the shimmying hula girl figurine and a stack of traffic tickets, and tamped it down on the steering wheel.
“Fuckin guy,” Almond Head added, prompting for some reason not readily apparent to me a hearty round of knee-slapping laughter. Carlos straightened his purple lensed shades as Almond Head poked in the cigarette lighter and fished a fattie out of his shirt pocket.
We roared past the Brooklyn Museum, and a lady in a torn terrycloth bathrobe, walking a white drop-kick dog, gaped. “You could’ve gotten us all killed,” I said, wiping clammy sweat from my forehead. More knee-slapping laughter erupted. Almond Head lit the joint and plumes of smoke billowed out of the Olds’ open windows on this muggy Tuesday night.
“You fuckin crazy, you know that?” Carlos said to me, shaking his head. “Here.” He passed me a pint bottle of Bacardi Light. “C’mon,” he said. “Live a little.” I unscrewed the cap, took a swig and passed it up front to Almond Head. He took it, and passed the joint to Carlos.
“Where you wanna go, man?” Carlos said, exhaling slowly.
“I dunno,” I said. “We have work tomorrow, Carlos.”
Another eruption of laughter, mixed with coughing, knee-slapping, roof pounding and door banging.
“We have work tomorrow, Carlos,” Almond Head mimicked.
“Well it’s late,” I said. “It’s two ayem.”
“Yeah, well fuck you and fuck Adelman, man. We’ll show up when we show up, right?” Carlos nudged Almond Head as Utica whizzed by. Almond Head smiled dreamily. A train must have just left the Utica Avenue station, since the wide intersection was crowded with passengers coming up from the subway, even at this time of night.
Carlos leaned on the horn, barely braking. “Get out the fuckin’ way, man!” he yelled out of the window. Weary pedestrians scattered, halfhearted, picking up their pace just enough to avoid us, like street-savvy pigeons, as we blew through the intersection.
“Let’s go back to the block,” Almond Head said.
“Nah, man…let’s go to the Bronx! I’ll swing by Howard and we’ll pick up Junior, Marianne and Nancy.”
“Where in the Bronx?” I asked, my heart sinking.
“Just a little club on Southern Boulevard,” Almond Head said. “Nice place.”
“You gonna love it,” added Carlos.