King Suckerman

“Aw, come on, man,” said Jimmy, who was totally not into BTO. “Not this again.”

“Not fragiiiile,” sang Dewey and Jerry together, giving it their best gravelly try. They laughed and slapped each other five. Dewey grabbed the beer can lodged between his thighs and took a long swig, closing his eyes momentarily as he drank. The Pontiac swerved a little, and the driver of an AMC Rebel to the right of them honked his horn. Dewey flipped the guy off before accelerating and cutting into the right lane.

“Hey, Dewey,” said Jimmy, “why don’t you give this shit a rest?”

Dewey nudged Jerry, said to Jimmy, “Whaddaya wanna listen to, Toothpick? Gong? Kraftwerk? Some bullshit like that?”

Dewey called Jimmy Toothpick just to piss him off. Jimmy wasn’t just thin. He was skinny, and in a scary kind of way.

“Anything,” said Jimmy.

“How about Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow?” said Dewey.

Jimmy had a pull off his beer while he thought it over. “Leave this on,” he said. “I guess this is all right.”

Jerry grabbed the bag from the glove box and the pipe from under the seat. The pipe was Dewey’s, a corncob number he had purchased from a retarded middle-aged clerk at People’s Drug in Wheaton Plaza. On the pipe’s body Dewey had wood-burned a sketch of a snake with a tongue in the shape of a cross. Dewey was known around Einstein High as Schmidt the Snake, a name he had invented himself. Though he talked a big game about his lovemaking technique, quoting liberally from the porno mags spread around his bedroom in the garden apartment he shared with his widowed mom, Dewey Schmidt had seen very little action in his seventeen years on earth — one shockingly quick blow job from a hooker on his sixteenth birthday and one messy cherry-bust with a short-term girlfriend named Laurie Lynn — but somehow the moniker had stuck.

Dewey punched the gas, going south on 14th. The ’68 Firebird sounded faster than it was — a stock 350 sat beneath the hood — courtesy of the dual exhaust and Glas-pac Dewey had added after he bought the car. They neared Thomas Circle, and Dewey put his head out the window to yell at a black woman with blond hair who wore a short, tight leather skirt.

“Hey, sugar, you datin’ tonight?” he called.

“Pull over,” said the whore halfheartedly, her eyes blank, her smile as long lasting as a street-bought watch, but Dewey just laughed and kept driving.

“Hey, Jerry,” said Dewey, “what’s your mother doin’ downtown?”

“Your father,” said Jerry.

“Your baby sister,” said Jimmy, because he was expected to say something.

“Fuck you, bitch,” said Dewey. He wiped some beer off his chin.

Jerry filled the pipe, gave it a light. He passed the reefer over to Dewey, who hit it hard.

Jimmy looked out the window at the lights and the movement and the life on the street. Like Jerry and Dewey, he was a Maryland boy who came from Montgomery Hills — Monkey Hills to the locals — a community in Silver Spring just a couple of miles over the District line. Their infrequent trips into D.C. always made Jimmy’s pulse race, partly from the thrill of the new and partly from fear. Whatever the reason, he liked the way driving into the city made him feel.

“Here,” said Dewey, trying to hold the smoke in as he spoke. He passed the pipe over his shoulder to Jimmy.

Jimmy drew hard on the pipe, watched the embers flare in the bowl. He coughed out a lungful, sending a horizontal mushroom cloud of smoke toward the front. Dewey and Jerry had rolled their windows up to “keep in the high,” and a thick gray curtain had settled in the car. Jimmy was hot, sweating through his favorite long-sleeved shirt, a cowboy-style job with fake pearl buttons he had purchased at the Slack Shack. Jimmy wore long sleeves even in the summer; he was embarrassed about his girlishly thin arms.

“What, are you Bogartin’ that shit back there?” said Dewey. Jimmy handed him the pipe.

Dewey cut over to 13th. Jimmy watched Jerry Baluzy, who was staring at Dewey hitting the pipe. Jerry’s eyes were at half-mast, pink and glassy; his thick-lipped mouth was open, too. Jimmy smiled.

“Hit that motherfucker,” said Jerry, blinking heavily and jerking his chin in the direction of the pipe.

“Hit ’er in the shitter,” said Dewey.

All of them laughed.

“But you’re not getting any,” said Jerry.

“That’s not what your mama says,” said Dewey.

“Huh,” said Jerry, issuing a short, honking guffaw. He looked stupidly at Dewey. “You gotta suck it, maaaan!”

“Suck this,” said Dewey.

The chorus came back in on the song. Dewey and Jerry put their heads together, sang, “Not fragiiile.” Jimmy had one of those smiles on his face he couldn’t unglue. He was ripped and with his boys. The BTO tape, it sounded pretty good.