"This city's a cesspool, Sidney; it's our own little black hole of Calcutta, our own special swamp of corruption and degradation."

"You're right, JJ -- absolutely."

"I am right, Sidney - I'm right because I know every inch of this filthy place, every dive and gin joint, every show girl and crooked Senator, every bent cop and bowery bum. You know something else about this city, Sidney?"

"No, JJ - what?"

"I wouldn't have it any other way." He held out an unlit cigarette, not even looking at me. "Match me, Sidney."

"Hey, Sidney — what's JJ's ass taste like?"

"Just like your wife, Bert." The loading dock was quiet otherwise, heavy evening all around us, too much for even the stars; they hadn't come out all night. Oppressive, it was. Even the city's steam pipes kept their vapors to themselves, kept them underground. The streets were clear and sharp.

Too much for the stars, for steam, too much for Bert. He didn't get down off his stool next to the print shop door. This was good, because I was in a mood to punch someone, anyone, and he was close enough.

I guess he knew that, because he just snapped his morning edition in front of his fat face, mumbling something pissed-off and stupid into the sports section. He could tell that Joltin' Joe's picture was much less easy to piss off tonight. I needed to do something with my hands, so I lit a Lucky. The smoke soothed my nerves.

At least I didn't have to wait long. Ten minutes, maybe twenty, and the door rolled up. Before it even hit the top, the ink monkeys started hauling out bundles of the morning edition.

I cut the first, twine popping like a cheap firecracker, and grabbed a copy. "About Town" was there, JJ's black and white picture flat and cold over the byline. Flat and cold, that was JJ, right there. In print and everywhere else. There was the column, but there wasn't anything about my client, not one damned word about Clifford Lehman.

"Like crap," I said to Bert, stuffing the paper under my arm, and flicking the cigarette out into the quiet night. "He tastes like crap."

His usual table, at his usual place. The faces were different, but not the type: the same dogs hoping to catch a few miserable scraps. I was a dog too, but at least I was top dog.

That's what I thought, at least. I'd done my tricks, but I hadn't gotten my bone. Five to Curtis, the maitre d', to let me get back there. No chairs free. So I walked up. Stood.

He was on the phone, a huge black Bakelite beast. The receiver was small in his hand, the base held expectantly by a young waiter. "I heard you the first time, Senator, I just thought it wasn't worth wasting my breath telling you how foolish you sounded. But I can tell, now, that you're one of those poor unfortunates who actually needs to hear it, directly — Or are you?"

He listened for a moment, rolling a just-started cigarette between his fingers. "That's right, Senator. You understand me perfectly." The Senator's voice was high and scratchy until it was cut off by the hollow sound of the receiver being replaced on the cradle. "What is it about politics that makes diminished capacity an employment qualification? Take that thing away," he said to a waiter, who bowed once and vanished, reeling up the cord as he left.

Three chairs faced him, the pack of the night. A fat producer type with chins and gold rings; a blousy blond showgirl type with unfocused eyes; and a little wolf in a double-breasted number at least two years out of style. I knew his species; they nipped at my heels every day. If JJ didn't snap his nose I'd have to.

"Not like a press agent. No; at least with that rather dubious profession intellectual capacity is required, though morality and ethics are definite career hindrances. Right, Sidney?"

"Whatever you say, JJ. You know best."

A cold look from steel blue eyes. I stepped back.

"That's right, Sidney, I do. I absolutely know best — unlike creatures like yourself that know only which way to turn to avoid being kicked." He ground his cigarette out, bending it into flakes of gray ash. Another appeared in his hand from the depths of his beautiful suit. He held it out.

I was still burning deep inside, the smoke obscuring my brains. "Not right now, JJ."

He looked at me again, and my fires died under icy rain. "Right now, Sidney, right this very minute. You see, Sidney, you suffer from a specific ailment, one that you need to be reminded of periodically: the thought that you really matter to me, to the world, and most of all yourself. Match me, Sidney. This instant."

I looked at the end of the cigarette. Paper wrapped around tobacco. His strong fingers crushed the far end, making tiny flakes of brown stick out the front, towards me. My right hand was in my pants pocket, tight around my lighter. I fought the urge to pull it out, to push it towards him, to open it, flick alive a hot flame, and do it for him. I fought hard, trying to concentrate on anything except the cigarette or JJ's eyes.

I knew it, and he knew it: It wasn't just flame to tobacco. It was more than JJ's cigarette that was being pushing into my face. The place was cloudy with smoke, breathing in was like taking a drag. I could imagine the end of it in his mouth, lips around the paper, sucking in deep drags of smoke. The tip of his tongue resting on the warm end, just for a moment. Sometimes the smoke would be as warm as blood, like breathing in the essence of life. I didn't want to light it. I wanted to take it in my own mouth and draw it in deep, mix his warm smoke with my own blood, just for once taste the air that he breathed all the time.

What would it taste like, JJ's smoke? Oil from the presses? Some of the rare, best things in life? Roses? Gardenias? Maybe it just stank, the aroma of the careers he'd killed, the lives he'd ruined with his newspaper column. I didn't know, and maybe I'd never know that sweet smell of success, that taste of power -- and that made me want it all the more.

"I'm waiting, Sidney. You know I don't like to be kept waiting."

I shrank like a cheap suit in hot water. My lighter, still tight in my fist, was the only thing that mattered: taking it out, lighting him up -- or not. I stared at him, at the cigarette, steady in his hand. In the end I pulled it out, flipped it open, spun the wheel, waited for the flame, and then touched it - slowly, carefully - to the tip. I did it because he asked, because he was JJ and I was not; it was as simple as that.

"That's it, Sidney. That's a good boy," he said, admiring the glowing end for a long second before grinding it out in an ashtray.

I lingered in the background while the wolf in the cheap suit, the fat money-man, and the plastic doll begged for attention from JJ. The doll was in a show, something glittery and stupid waiting to be born just to die. The show was put up by the producer, something fat, greasy and stupid, also nearly dead. The little wolf would pick over their carcasses, like his kind always did.

JJ made them sit up and beg. He made them roll over. Finally, a dress rehearsal, he made them roll over and play dead, but they were too stupid to know it. All they saw was the great and powerful JJ paying attention to them, mouthing empty promises between acid assassinations of their intelligence and talent. When he'd had enough fun he dismissed them, promising a strategic mention in his next column; and they left wearing uncertain smiles, knowing deep down that they'd performed for nothing.

I knew they were going to their professional graves. I'd seen it too many times before, been there at too many of JJ's slick, clean kills after an evening of cold humiliation. What hurt, what got me in the belly, was the knife JJ had stuck there. After all these years, all the crooked little things I'd done, all the dirt on my hands and not his: to still have to feel the knife go in deep, like the rest of the little people.

"You still here, Sidney?" he said, looking up from his elegant handwriting on a sheaf of notes.

"Where would I go, JJ?" I said, trying to keep the sneer out of my voice.

"Oh, yes, where would you go? There can only be so many people in this fine city of ours who need your admirable services." He turned back to his notes, maybe scratching out "intelligent" and replacing it with" jackanape".

"People like Clifford Lehman, JJ. Maybe you've heard of him?"

"Who's that, Sidney? Someone else you're sniffing around, looking for scraps?"
"My client, JJ. The one I told you you'd mention in your column tonight."

"Take a look at me, Sidney. Take a good long look." He reached into his coat and produced a cigarette, began turning it in his hands and examining it like it was the only thing in the universe. "Do I look like you, Sidney? I don't think so, at least not the last time I looked in the mirror, and I can see that you are obviously not me. That's important, Sidney. I decide who I put in my column, not you. Do we understand each other?"

He held the cigarette out. I should have reminded him of his promise to mention Lehman in his column. I could have reminded him of the dirt under my nails -- his dirt. But I didn't. I looked at that cigarette and felt my knees weaken. "I got it, JJ." I said, my voice so soft I didn't think he heard it.

But he heard it all right. He hears everything. He took his eyes from mine and returned to looking at the cigarette, turning it slowly. "But sometimes, Sidney, I look in my mirror in the morning and ... see something there. I don't see it often, but I do see it -- around the eyes, Sidney. Right around here," starring at me again, one long middle finger tracing next to his firm nose, down his cheekbone, up around the side of his face, and back the way it came. "I look in the mirror and see you there, Sidney. Like I said, not often. But I see the little fool I used to be."

He held it out to me. I stared at it, and for me it was the only thing in the entire universe. The gesture was slight, almost hidden, but for me it was obvious: a cant of the wrist, the filter tilted towards me — an offering. I knew what it was, the dance we did with lighter and cigarette. I knew why I got a hard-on for filter tips, for Lucky Strikes; why the pop of sulfur from a match, the whiff of gas from a lighter, reached down deep and tugged at my guts. It wasn't completely a dick thing, but that was part of it. It wasn't that JJ was hot for me, or I for him; it was me, on my knees, lighting him. It had become this thing we did, his way of standing over me, and — god help me — I'd gotten used to it, almost looked forward to it.

This was different. JJ wasn't on his knees, but he hadn't pushed me down, stuck the unlit end in my face and told me to light it up. This time he was offering me the filter. He was sitting and I was standing, but he offered me one as though we were equals or something. I didn't know what to think. Even my guts didn't know what to think. The place seemed to have gone all quiet.

"This is a special arrangement, Sidney: a limited time offer. Take it. You know you want to."

I reached down and pinched it between my fingers. For a heartbeat, JJ didn't let go; then he did, and I brought the cigarette up to my face. I felt the texture of the tobacco through the crinkling paper, the virgin smell subtitle — almost imperceptible. I looked over the filtered end at JJ.

"That's it, Sidney, that's it. Feels good, doesn't it? That sense of control, the influence. You can make the world dance for you, Sidney: a waltz, a jig - you call the tune. Or at least you could."

I heard it between the words, and what I was holding was just a cigarette, just some dried weeds wrapped in cheap paper. Just that.

"What do you want, JJ?" I said.

"You know me too well, Sidney. There's this ...annoyance, over at the Tribune. Calls himself a columnist, when he's barely capable of writing a shopping list, let alone wield words in an effective, or even competent, manner. You know people, Sidney — people who might be able to show him the error of his arrogance. Do that and my thanks will be ... impressive."

That was it. Back on my knees, my lips open. I wanted to pulverize the cigarette in my fist, throw down the pathetic thing onto his table. Would I? Did I? No. I didn't because I could really smell it, sweet and alluring, for the first time in my life. I could take his demands, his condescension, his games of blood and tears, because I held the first cigarette he'd ever given me.

"Okay, JJ. I'll do it." I hoped he could hear the hidden 'last time' between the words and understand that everything had changed when he gave me the cigarette. It wasn't just his. That day, it became ours.

JJ's hearing is excellent. He can hear and tiniest little gossiping bird on the busiest part of Broadway. But he looked at me like I hadn't said anything. In his hand was another cigarette, filter towards him, raw tobacco demanding a light.

I knew people. I knew a lot of people, and some of them were even speaking to me. I slipped into my office long enough to grab my little black book, avoid a call from Clifford Lehman, get that special little bag I keep behind the radiator, and get out before anyone saw me. Burt Kello was one of those names in my little black book: a bull-necked cop who wasn't happy unless he was breaking someone in half. Some people had blood in their veins, others - like JJ - had ice water, but Kello had other people's blood. The sight of it, the smell of it, animated him; he smiled when other people screamed, frowned when the city was quiet and behaving itself. I hated Kello, but I needed him, which made me hate him more.

I ducked into a little coffee bar on Broadway and called him. Gave him a name, a time, and what to look for. It wasn't true, of course, or at least it would be — in an hour or two.

I also knew a guy named Ernest Odets. I'd read his column a few times on and off ever since he started at the Tribune. He wasn't JJ (thank god, there was only one JJ) but he was good. I thought about hitting him up for some coverage, getting some of my clients their slice of the limelight. But there was something sickly honest about him, as if he was blessed with a glow while the rest of us burned with guilt. I knew a few other things about him — like where he'd be tonight, and what Kello would find in his pocket an hour from now.

The Gaslight was too well lit for its name. Walking in I felt the bright lights over the bar and had to shade my eyes, as if the dark streets had permanently blinded me in anything other than twilight. I found him in the back, rubbing his forehead as he struggled with something scrawled in a notebook. Pieces, no doubt, that would be tomorrow's column. He saw me, eyes big and pale blue, and went back to his notebook. I felt my back stiffen. Kiss my ass or kick it, at least see that it was there.

"Hey, Ernest," I said, sliding up to him, trying to make out the scribbles in the notebook " -- no rest for the wicked, eh? Let me buy a hard-working Joe like you something to lubricate the pen a bit."

"Go away, Sidney," he said, still not looking up. "I don't have anything to say to JJ."

"I'd have those eyes checked if I were you, Ernest. I don't see JJ here." I signaled to a waiter. "Two, straight-up, with ice."

He looked up from his book, shook his head at the waiter, and finally saw me. "No, Sidney, JJ's not here. But you are, and that's the same thing, isn't it?"

"Give me some credit, Ernest," I said, tapping out a Lucky Strike and making a show of hunting for a lighter or a match. "This is Sidney you're talking to here. Sure, I do things for JJ, and he does things for me — just like I'd like to do something for you."

He looked at the cigarette in my hand. "Those things are bad for you, Sidney. Quit while you can."

I felt a frown crease my face, in spite of myself. I 'found' my lighter and lit up, breathing a gray cloud down at the table. The smoke was sweet but faintly bitter. I'd had it too long in my pocket, the tobacco was stale. It wouldn't burn cleanly. "Lots of things are bad for you, Ernest. Lots of things. Still doesn't mean you can't enjoy them."

"That's pathetic," he said, closing his notebook with a soft slap. "No, you're pathetic, Sidney: sniffing around, playing JJ's lapdog, his pet, his boy, his punk. Do you like sniffing around the dregs that JJ passes down to you? You've got to, that's the only thing that makes sense. You've got to like getting down on your knees and lighting him up. That's it, isn't it, Sidney? Be honest for once in your life. You like giving it up to him. Say it."

I rose, crushing the hot end of my Lucky into his open notebook. For a moment, stale tobacco mixed with burning paper. "You want honesty, boy scout? You want the Big Truth for the column no one reads? How's this for a scoop: it's not pretty, it tastes like crap, but people like JJ run this town, and run this world. People like you don't see it till their boots fall on your face, till your dead and the dirt's in your mouth. That's the truth, Ernest, and it's about time you figured that out."

So I turned and left, not looking back. I stopped at the door just long enough to put my coat on — and put the special little bag I'd taken from my office into Ernest's coat pocket. Outside, the night was just as I'd left it: cold and dark, with only the glow of Broadway to light my way. I stood there for a second, breathing hard. As I was digging into my pocket for another smoke, I saw Kello's car pull up, and he and another beefy flatfoot got out and headed into the place. I stood outside for a second, the unlit cigarette in my mouth, before finally lighting up. As the flame touched the end, as the paper and then the flaked brown leaves caught with a crackle, I inhaled. I was expecting the smoky hit, the warm glow from inside out, but it didn't happen: the smoke was too hot, the smell harsh and old. Still more stale tobacco. A cough reached up and grabbed my chest in a lightening spasm, and the cigarette fell to the sidewalk. I looked at it, still smoldering among the garbage, and thought for a second about picking it up to take another sour hit. Instead I threw the rest of the pack away, planning on getting myself a fresh one on the way to JJ's penthouse. A little celebration for a job well done.

It took me awhile to get there, a nice little stroll through the leaden night. The city that never sleeps was nevertheless not quite awake. A cop directed traffic like a slow ballet dancer. A shoeshine boy polished with steady, lethargic grace.

I finished my fresh cigarette as I walked up to JJ's lobby door. The smoke was light and feathery in my lungs, a glowing warmth that made the night seem warm. A smoke had never tasted sweeter. For the first time in my life I felt the way JJ must feel all the time. I looked at the glowing end of my cigarrette and felt the world revolve around the glowing tip. It wasn't just a Lucky, it was my dick that the whole damned city was turning around.

I finished it with a flourish and flicked it in a glowing arc. It landed with a tiny shower of bright orange sparks as I went inside, and up.

The place was dark, almost as black as the night outside. The only light came from a bedside light in one of the side bedrooms. I almost missed JJ, out on the balcony; his white bathrobe outlined him against the distant gray towers of the city. I only knew he was facing me, and not the tiny lights of Manhattan, when he said, "Come out here, Sidney."

"Done and done," I said, stepping out into the cool night sky. I tried to keep my face cool and indifferent, but he heard the smile in my voice.

"So how does the canary taste, Sidney? As sweet as you expected?"

"Just doing what needed to be done, JJ."

He smiled, showing a lot of porcelain. "What I needed done, Sidney; don't forget that. I asked, and you did."

He stepped back inside and I followed, walking in just as he was opening a small brass box sitting on a elegant marble table. "Kello informs me that Mr. Odets has managed to escape his long arms, but that he should be arrested momentarily."

The thought of Ernest being in Kello's fat, calloused hands made me hesitate, whatever I was about to say vanishing from my mind.

"Not that his arrest is all that important to developments, eh, Sidney? In this town, all it takes is the suggestion of impropriety, the implication of some misbehavior, for the axe to fall. At least a suggestion that comes from an unimpeachable source." He smiled wryly, knowing that many 'little birds' had whispered many hideous rumors into his ears, all faithfully passed onto his hundreds of thousands of readers. "The fact that Mr. Odets was brought in for questioning by Kello will do the job just fine, and his inevitable booking and sentence for possession will simply be a satisfying conclusion to my readers: a reminder that, for the wicked, there is no escape from the law."

He stood, holding a cigarette. In the dim apartment it was pale white, almost glowing in the distant lights of the city.

"-- and a reminder of the power of JJ." I said, the words coming before I could stop them.

He turned toward me, his face lost in shadow. He was the white form of his bathrobe, the slender streak of his cigarette. "Yes, Sidney, that is the lesson to be learned here - for more than the unfortunate Mr. Odets."

The cigarette hovered near his waist. I couldn't see, but I knew his robe was open. He was naked under it. His dick was hard.

"You know what's expected of you, Sidney. Don't disappoint me." The cigarette bobbed slightly, the pale, narrow shaft dipping and rising in the low light.

Without thinking, I dropped my hand to my front pants pocket and my hand closed around the hardness of my lighter. Carefully, slowly, I pulled it out. It gleamed from the distant reflections and light spills of Broadway. I stroked it, once, my mind full of nothing but traffic noise.

"Match me, Sidney," JJ said, his voice low and powerful.

I moved towards him, but he stepped back, pulling the cigarette away."No, Sidney. Get down on your knees."

I started to say something but I could feel him staring me down, his cold blue eyes pushing through the front of my head, into my brain.

The carpet was plush, ashen, like I was kneeling in a manicured ashtray. I could feel the heat from his naked body, and I started to sweat — really sweat. In my hand, my lighter was slippery.

"That's it, Sidney. You know what to do."

I flipped it open, the flame bright in the darkness. I turned my head away, trying not to see all that it revealed, but I saw enough to make me swallow hard. Carefully, I touched the blue and yellow flame to the end of his cigarette.

Seeing the paper and tobacco catch, JJ pulled it away from my sight, up to his lips. I could hear, but not see, the faint crackle, the tiny roar, as he took his first drag.

I didn't wait; I climbed right to my feet — took two big steps back, the hard marble of the table hitting me in the calves. "Okay, JJ. I did what you wanted," I started, but then I saw a shadow in the side room. A shadow that moved.

"This is a evil city, Sidney; it's a place full of darkness and corruption. It's my job to tell my readers that, to expose the underbelly of this decaying gotham. But there's something else you seem to forget about this city, Sidney."

Kello stepped out of the side room, his huge, burly body filling the doorway. He looked at me and smiled, showing wide, brown teeth.

"It's mine, Sidney, and I won't share it with anyone." He turned away from Kello and me, neatly closing his robe. "It seems to me, Detective Kello, that Mr. Odets must have had a supplier for his illegal substances. Someone perhaps in the same industry, say, a certain press agent. I do believe you would be doing this fine city a great service if you would bring someone like that in for questioning. I'm sure, too, that Mr. Odets would be more than willing to agree that he was the supplier in question — for a diminished sentence, of course."

I didn't say anything — because, instantly, I knew there wasn't anything I could say. I just ran.

The night was still cold, but even more empty. This wasn't my town anymore, if it ever was. Everyone I saw as I ran was connected by newsprint and ink to Kello's big, bruising hands. Every cab only went one place — to the precinct house. Every cab was an express to a cement cell, a rubber hose. The only thing being served in every diner and café was ashes.

I couldn't go home, I couldn't go to my office. I couldn't get out, and I couldn't stay. I might stay out of Kello's reach for a few hours, maybe a few days, but I'd never escape JJ. I almost laughed because what I wanted, more than anything, was a smoke.

Behind the Gaslight was an alley. Garbage cans and rotting food and broken crates. It could have been anywhere in the city, every alley merging with every other one, making a hobo highway through the dark city. It was that alley, the one behind the Gaslight, and the one I finally stumbled into, exhausted — struggling for breath.

Did I really hear the voice? I'd been hearing a lot of strange things since I ran from JJ's apartment, out into the dark city: sirens racing down the canyons, Kello's footsteps from every doorway, JJ's voice from on high pronouncing my death, celebrating my destruction to a city of faithful readers.

I looked up from where I crouched behind broken boxes to see a shadowed figure, his clothes torn, hair a mad disarray. "Sidney?" the figure asked, in a low, conspiratorial voice.

His name burst from my lips "Odets? My God - Odets! They're after me. You're got to help me. They're everywhere — I have to get away."

He looked made of stone, in the dim light of the alley. His face barely moved as he spoke. "Maybe, Sidney -- maybe I'll help you. After all, I know exactly how you feel. Exactly.

"Thank God! Thank you, Ernest — oh, thank you ... if there's anything, anything, you need you just let me know —"

It was hard to see: that smile slide across his lips. "Oh, you will, Sidney. You will thank me. That I guarantee." There was a cigarette in his hand — a crumbled, almost broken cigarette. "Light it, Sidney. Light me."

 

©2003 M. Christian - Contributor's Bio