When Ariel awakened from his K-hole, the addict on the bench was gone.
He glanced at his phone: Medulla, 1 Missed Call.
Ariel sighed.
She rang again a half-hour later as he dallied down St. Claude Avenue, girding his loins to tell Tyler and Brian about the ugly moment at the Harlequin. Brian knew Ariel’s sensitivities better than to bust his balls right away, but once the sting subsided, the phrase “dusty cunt” was sure to join the lexicon at 1101 St. Monica in perpetuity.
Not telling his friends wasn’t an option. The story was too perfectly horrid.
When his phone ceased buzzing, Ariel’s relief was short-lived. He was on the lam now. He was in trouble.
He drifted past an adult bookstore on the north side of the Avenue, with a painted plywood sign installed in place of the front window:
“SINSATIONZ: BOOKS. BEADS. BUDDY BOOTHS.”
What a lovely way to pass the time, Ariel thought. I always WAS a bit of a bookworm.
He ducked into the front door and nodded at the owner, a man of indeterminate national origin, who nodded back from behind a Plexiglas divider. Ariel strolled past a rack of dusty DVDs, a display of toxic “Made in China” sex toys, and pushed through a pair of swinging doors adjacent to a sign:
WARNING.
1 PERSON PER BOOTH.
MUST PUTTING MONEY IN SLOT.
MANAGEMENT NOT REPONIBLE FOR PICKPOCKETS.
Upon entering the maze of crudely constructed black plywood hovels in the back room, Ariel darted his eyes to see who was around.
Slow night, it seemed. His surveillance was interrupted by a hungry Walking Dead specimen who emerged from a shadowy corner, his hands reaching for Ariel’s crotch. Ariel feinted, then spun like a basketball player into an open booth, closing and latching the door. He took a seat on a cracked plastic chair before a splotchy cathode-ray TV.
Four-inch diameter holes were cut at waist level on the dividing walls to his left and right.
As Ariel pulled out his wallet, somebody banged on the door.
“You putting money in or I kick you butt on street!” cried a voice from the other side.
“I just. Sat. Down!” Ariel shouted primly over the plywood. Where DO these Buddy Booth Monitors HAIL from, anyway? he wondered. He inserted a dollar into the slot, the light went out, and the TV blasted on at full volume.
To judge by the grainy video, the vintage porn might well have been running on a nonstop loop since the 80’s. A woman with pendulous breasts was operating a jackhammer in what Ariel called a “book scene”: the janky pre-coital dialogue. He changed the channel.
A sultry-voiced woman cooed an ancient phone sex-line advertisement:
“Feeling naughty? How ‘bout some water sports? A golden shower of sexy hot pee. Call 970-P-E-E-E. The extra ‘E’ is for Extra Pee.”
Ariel wrinkled his nose. Straight people.
His felt his phone buzz again. Shit. His body tingled with fight-or-flight dread. He wouldn’t dare disrespect Medulla by taking her call in a Buddy Booth. He glanced at his phone.
It was his mother. He took the call. “What?”
“Where ya at? Grand Central Station?”
“No, Betty.”
“Remember when you called me ‘Mom’? Remember when you called me ever?”
“I called you ‘Mom’ for two years back when I was a tweaker.”
“Very funny.”
“And I called you on Mother’s Day.”
“During the Obama administration.”
“I called you at Christmas!”
“When you were frying your tits off on three hits of acid!”
“It! Was! Christmas!” Ariel fumed.
She was one to talk. Ariel’s mother gave “Let It Snow” a disgraceful new meaning on more than one White Christmas morning, chattily chopping lines with God-knows-where-he-came-from, having stayed up for days on end, as Young Ariel rushed to the Christmas tree to find nothing underneath.
The ensuing apologetic shopping spree at the gas station - the only place open - offered feeble comfort. No heartwarming TV specials hearkened to his heartstopping holidays; no carols sang the praises of cocaine, criminals and Quaaludes.
“Whatcha up to?” Betty asked.
“I’m volunteering. For men in need.”
“Never lose that big ol’ heart,” Betty enthused in a perfunctory manner before getting down to business in her chipper way. “So guess what?”
“No.”
“It’s a surprise!”
“Nope.”
“I’m gettin’ gas right now. I’m on the Turnpike outta Boca Raton. I’m comin’ to New Orleans for a visit!”
Ariel shoulders rose to meet his earlobes. “NOW?”
“Surprise! I took a handful of Vitamin Pills. I’m jazzed for an all-nighter behind the wheel.”
A pallid hand reached through the gloryhole and tapped Ariel’s leg. He jumped and reflexively slapped it away. The arm withdrew like a snail.
“Turn the car around, Betty.”
“You don’t have to entertain me. I could use a Girl’s Night Out for a week or two. Let my tits flop out.”
Ariel cleansed his mind of the image. “What hotel you at?”
“The Cozy Rooms.”
Ariel rose in his seat, the hair on the back of his neck curling. “No. Nein. Nyet.”
The TV went blank with a click as a light snapped on, whereupon the buddy booth monitor banged on the door. “You putting money now or you get!”
Ariel unlatched the door and cracked it open. “I’m on the phone with my mother,” he hissed. He slammed and latched the door, fed a five into the contraption, and resumed the call. “You can’t just barge in, Betty. You didn’t even ask.”
“May your sweet Mommie stay at the Cozy Rooms?” Betty asked in a diabetes-inducing little-girl-voice whose charms held little sway five decades on.
“No, that odious Gorgon may not.”
“You’re so funny. C’mon, Ariel, it’s the Hooks family seat!”
“The Cozy Rooms would be rubble by now if I hadn’t fixed the fucking place up! A parking lot! And it’s held up by spit and spackle as it is!”
“It’s as much mine as it is yours.”
“Who’s busting his ass to keep Cozy Rooms from foreclosure? ME. Who makes the innumerable repairs? ME. Who’s been ...”
“I have keys.”
“... changing the locks?” Ariel sang triumphantly. “ME.”
Ariel’s peripheral vision registered movement from the glory hole to his right. Bracing himself for the worst, he watched in wonder as a beautiful uncut black penis flopped through, followed by two plum-sized testicles.
After the day he had, Ariel felt like Noah greeting the dove with her olive sprig. There is life.
“Oops! Gotta skedaddle, Betty. Duty calls.”
“What kinda work you DOING, exactly?”
“Making reparations.”
#
The bitch hung up on me, thought his mother.
Betty replaced the gas nozzle into the pump and peered over her lime-green Fiat convertible, eyes scanning the passing traffic.
The coast seemed clear.
Could a drug cartel access my cell phone location? How does that kind of thing work, anyway? she wondered.
Feeling overwhelmed, Betty climbed into her front seat and slammed the door. She cranked up some Enya and considered her situation, double-fisting a Slim Jim and a Virginia Slim.
Ariel is always such a crab, she mused. Always was. If he only knew how much I gave him over the years. How much it cost.
But given that her cottage in Boca Raton was firebombed to cinders and she fled in terror without thinking to grab her purse, she had to knuckle under. She was down to sixty-two bucks and two changes of clothes, retrieved from the “go bag” that she stashed in Smyrna Beach for such an occasion.
“Sail away, sail away, sail away,” Enya counseled.
With no choice but to proceed to the Cozy Rooms and make nice with her son, Betty pulled her Fiat back onto the Florida Turnpike, heading northwest.
###
Thank you for reading!
☮️ & ❤️,
