“Fuck you!” Paul yelled back.
Both of us started to panic after that. I thought of him drowning and of how much trouble I’d be in. I could almost picture it, heaped on top of the grief I’d be feeling. I grabbed him then, and we both gave it all we had and were eventually washed ashore. It was terrifying.
August 30, 1983
Raleigh
The woman next door seems to be moving out. Apparently there was a big fight while I was at the beach and the police were called. Bessie told me this. “Those two was having a free-for-all,” she said, meaning, I guess, the woman and her boyfriend. She added that the woman had two dogs that would shit in the apartment. “Then she’d pick up the turds and toss them out the window,” Bessie said.
September 22, 1983
Raleigh
Last night the neighbors had a huge fight. The woman, who it seems did not move out, is obese with red hair. She works at a pool hall and lives with a thin, trashy man who’s around my age. They hold hands a lot on the street and use the phone at Watkins Grill because they don’t have one of their own.
Their argument started at midnight. I was up working, so I put a glass against the wall. The woman was slurring and yelling about him running around with a hussy—such an old-fashioned word. Apparently he can’t hold down a job and spends his days drinking, doing drugs, and watching TV. They haven’t made love in three days. She won’t let him because all he wants is to get his rocks off. “You want to climb on and climb off, but I’m a lovin’ kind of woman.”
He said she’s nothing but a cocktease, and when she brought up the hussy again he called her a fat whore.
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
Then he said that at least he knows who his father is. “Your mother was just a whore like you.”
“No, your mother was a whore.”
“No, yours was.”
“No, yours was.”
She called him a sorry son of a bitch and then he threw her against the wall I had my glass against. When he then walked into the other room, she went berserk, shouting, “Hussy!” Doors were slammed, things broke. I’d have called the police if I’d had a phone, but it hasn’t been connected yet.
Bessie told me this goes on all the time. They fight and then the police are called. A few weeks ago he was led away in handcuffs, but the next day he was back. I guess it’s just their way.
October 3, 1983
Raleigh
At the mailbox this afternoon I met Faye, the heavy woman next door with the red hair. She asked if I had change for a quarter, and while I went through my pockets she asked if I knew anyone who had a phone. She said she needed to call her daddy, so I let her in.
When Faye got no answer, she asked if she could try again later. Then she said that if I needed any furniture, just holler because she and her boyfriend, Vic, have a whole lot. A few minutes later she returned with a woman who’s even bigger than she is. The friend had knocked on my door yesterday and asked if Johnny was here.
“I’m afraid I don’t know any Johnny,” I told her.
It turns out Faye has a cat as well, a Siamese named Tiki. She saw Neil when she was using the phone and asked if I’d be interested in having the two of them mate. On her way out, she told me that she has two beautiful daughters that Social Services has taken. She hasn’t seen them since December 24, but if she and Vic are good, she can maybe get them back. “The woman in one oh three is a hussy,” Faye said. “She’s forty-one, but I’m just twenty-nine and had never been in jail in my life until last year.” She asked if I’d make some puppets for her beautiful daughters and told me that while she was out the other day, Vic had the hussy right there in their bed. To get him back she also made love with someone in the exact same spot. Last Friday she cut Vic, and the police arrived while she still had the knife in her hand. “I threw it under the bed,” she told me. “He beats me up sometimes. I have bruises, but don’t you never call the police on us. We’re not allowed to get into trouble.”
October 4, 1983
Raleigh
Faye’s friend came at seven thirty to use the phone. She’s short and fat and has a tattoo on her left shoulder. Halter tops show it off, so she always wears one, regardless of the weather. The friend has buckteeth and wears a lot of jewelry. I was busy and didn’t want her using my phone, but she said it was an emergency. I’m thinking I need to put a note on my door, though I’m not sure what it will say.
October 6, 1983
Raleigh
Since moving downtown I’ve been going to Jimmy’s Market, which is four blocks from my apartment. I mainly shop for little things. I got cat food, beer, and a pack of cigarettes there late this afternoon and was walking my bike toward home when three men spread across the sidewalk and blocked my path. They were older, in their forties and fifties. Poorly dressed. “Hey, white boy,” one of them said. “Give me a cigarette.”
I had a freshly lit one in my hand and was proceeding around them when one of the men came from behind and grabbed my shoulder. Meanwhile, another guy planted himself in front of my bike. “Go any further and I’ll beat the shit out of you.” He said that he should take my grocery bag and smack me over the head with it. “What do you think of that?”
The man wore an army shirt and a stocking cap. His lower teeth were brown and worn down to nubs. He had my bike by the handlebars while his friends stood just behind me. There was no one ahead of me on the sidewalk. There was no traffic. “Goddamn it,” the man said. “I tole you to give me a cigarette.”
I said nothing, and he called me a sissy white boy—three times. He said he should knock my sissy teeth down my throat, that he would too.
I looked at him, expecting to get hit and wondering if I might actually lose a few teeth. Then I’d be one of those guys who lives in the Vance Apartments and is missing some teeth—I’d belong there. It never occurred to me that I’d win the fight. I haven’t hit anyone since the third grade, while this guy looked to have been doing it all his life. Plus he had backup, which he kept looking at over my shoulders.