Looks like Dave, only better dressed.
We took the drive in my Volare to the flatlands of Alameda and pulled into the parking lot of a cheap, long, two-story motel. It was one of those places you could rent rooms by the week at a much lower rate, with no questions asked, used by prostitutes and such.
I well remember getting out of the car, going up a staircase and along an outside walkway past many closed doors till we came to one open door in the center of the building. There was no need to knock. We entered the room hand in hand and there was Dave, asleep, in very dirty long johns on a skimpy couch, snoring loudly. I marveled at the door being wide open. There was an Uzi machine gun in plain sight on the coffee table beside him and a zip-lock bag of white powder beside that. I wondered how many other people must have passed this open door and beheld the picture I was now contemplating.
But Lindsey didn’t hesitate to enter and shake him gently by the shoulder and wake him up. We were introduced, shook hands, and pulled up two chairs from a table to sit across from him. I gave him the three hundred dollars from my pocket which cheered him up and we began to talk. No one bothered to close the front door.
I remember how polite he tried to be, (in his conversation) and how ludicrous it was with him in those dirty, brown, long johns. He excused himself to us for nodding off, explaining that he wasn’t expecting visitors that afternoon but was very happy that we dropped by. He was clearly happy with Lindsey’s visit, and mine too with the cash. Even though our business was done he kept us there chatting away. I could see he had few visitors and wanted friends. The talk between me and him quickly rose to a university level of diction and he grew more excited as it did, as if he’d been starved of intelligent dialogue for a long time. Shabby as his appearance was, and the gun and the stupidity of his door being wide open and a bag of powder so blatantly exposed and him snoring away, I quickly realized that he was highly educated, sharp and full of knowledge. Once again, such an oddity entranced me, fascinated me and quickly sealed our friendship.
She’d met him a year earlier through her abusive ex-boyfriend, a small-time, punk drug dealer who did occasional business with Dave, along with a few other low-life connections.
He was a strange sight to see, which the underwear only amplified. He was very short, barely five feet tall but overweight, with a big, round, hairy beer belly which protruded between his top and bottom long johns. He had long, scraggly, light brown hair. You could tell and smell that he hadn’t taken a shower in weeks. He had a thin, pointy, goatee beard that only covered his chin, about three inches long, giving him the appearance of a wizard, (Rasputin like). His nose was large, thin and hooked, Jewish, and he was Jewish. His eyes were deep set, narrow and small, so he wasn’t at all handsome. But there was a liveliness, a light in them that suggested a great deal of intelligence.
In fact, he was so ill-formed and ugly all his life that in a high school play he cast himself as ‘Richard the Third’ and knew Shakespeare’s beginning soliloquy by heart, where he describes his deformity. He once recited it to me, verbatim.
We started talking and I found he was genial, friendly and smart. Our conversation that day lasted hours and covered a wide range of topics. We hit it off very well and promised to visit him the next day, on his insistence, which we did. He also gave us another half-ounce to sell.
We visited every afternoon for the next week, giving him wads of twenties from the sales. The warehouse was now inundated with his stuff, and the purchases slowed. My tenure at Steve’s was ending (with his return from Boston) and Dave was unhappy at the motel so we decided to rent an apartment together. He had the money but was nowhere near presentable enough to get one on his own. With our help that hurdle was solved. We bought a paper and went through the adds.
Lindsey dressed up and was our negotiator. We chose a two-bedroom, fully furnished, newer unit in the slums of Oakland, where police rarely ventured. Our landlord was a slim, well-dressed, middle-aged black man wearing cologne and gold chains around his neck. The unit had been empty for months, (as it was a bit pricey) and he was eager to fill it, even though we weren’t at all what he expected. Lindsey did all the talking, perfumed and charming, while I stood beside her, her obvious boyfriend, smiling. Dave sat in the back seat of the ‘Volare’ ten feet away, dressed in jeans and a shirt. All our neighbors, all the neighborhood was black. But cash talks. Lindsey pulled out a wad from her purse and I mentioned we’d have no problem with the first month rent and last month deposit. He immediately gave us the tour, hardly noticing Dave, and pulled out a lease at the kitchen table for Lindsey to sign. The deal was sealed and we moved in.
I just mentioned that Lindsey ‘dressed up’, and she did so to the hilt. She had some very sexy outfits and knew well how to put on make-up. But I also mentioned that when she first came to me she had nothing but one handbag.
She’d mentioned from the beginning that she left behind a whole wardrobe of nice clothes and shoes and make-up and other items in her quick escape from her ex. But she didn’t know how to retrieve them. If she went alone and just demanded them, she’d probably be beaten up again. She dreaded the idea of taking me along to get them, as her ‘ex’ was violent and had weapons. But calling the police was also out of the question. She knew he had drugs all over the house and figured if he was busted because of her, his revengeful spirit would put her in peril as soon as he got out of jail. We discussed this conundrum at length. Neither of us could come up with a solution. But a ‘Deus ex Machina’, like an answer to our prayers, fell right into our laps, out of the blue, one afternoon.
Her ‘ex’ had never seen me or my car. He didn’t know me or had even heard my name. That was one of the compelling reasons she chose me as her escape, besides the fact that she knew I was attracted to her and she likewise to me. She kept me a total secret from him, just as I kept her a wishful hope in my imagination. He had no car and when he visited Dave he had to take a twenty-minute bus ride from Oakland to Alameda.
On our third visit to Dave, just as we pulled out of the parking lot to go home, Lindsey spots her ‘ex’ walking up the street towards the motel, obviously on a visit to Dave. She ducks, I drive past him and we both immediately realize this was a window of opportunity. Even if he’d spotted her (which we knew he didn’t) it would take him forty minutes to get home, while we could drive there in fifteen. So we did, broke a flimsy lock and filled my trunk at a leisurely pace with all her belongings, years’ worth, in suitcases and boxes, as they’d traveled here from New Jersey to live together forever, like a married couple, before his ugly side turned up.
We told the story to Dave the next day. He never really liked Lindsey’s ‘ex’, as a small-time peddler always in arrears for fronts. He agreed to keep his knowledge of us a secret and he did. This even solidified our plans to move all the sooner. When we did, a few days later, none of us ever saw him again, or wanted to.
