Bluestone's Blog

PART NINE

(Published in 1999)

So I wait about five minutes, and all I get for entertainment is this young college guy across the street standing in the doorway of the flophouse Lexington Hotel, dry-humping and tongue-kissing this old hag of a bar fly.  I’m getting ready to yell at those fuckers and condemn their public indecency when I hear an engine start up behind me.

Roy is backing out of a parking space.  He has his arm out the window waving me on. I run up to the black Cadillac Eldorado and jump in the plush charcoal-gray leather seats.  Roy is snorting and laughing and looking at me proudly.  Am I supposed to praise him?  I don’t know.

“Jesus, man, this is unobtrusive?” I strain for politeness. “This is stealth?  We’ll be riding down the highway to the Grey Rock Hotel in this goddamn pimp car.”

“Calmly please, calmly. Let’s think this out, Donny. This car is black. It is night. It is dark, or you could say black, at night. We will fit right in.”

“It’s a goddamn almost new Caddy. Perhaps a bit ostentatious for an… a… Native American—don’t you think?  I mean, no offense meant, but it doesn’t seem like your people are exactly burning up the place around here.  With financial success, I mean.”

“Again my son, I shall say to you: The car is black. The night is black.  The crow is black.  Bear shit is black.  We will be fine as long as I stay the speed limits. There are a lot of rich fucks from Chicago up that way, staying at the condos.  This car will fit right in, like I said, no problem. The cops up the shore are usually too busy busting teen-age girls and coercing blowjobs from them in exchange for leniency, to be checking out any hot list from Souptown.  As long as you got the money, honey, I got the ride.  Besides, I’ve always wanted to drive a car with the fabulous Northstar System. Whatever the fuck that is…. Look at the dash work on this thing.”

“Cockpit City. I really need a drink.”

He drives me back to the rooming house, so I can grab a few necessities, and we’re on the way. Before we leave town we stop at a liquor store and pick up a few supplies.

We are about halfway across this big bridge, the John C. Blatnik Bridge it says on a green sign, when I start to feel pretty good.  I stare at the lights on the hillside of approaching Duluth, Minnesota.  It isn’t bad to look at, at one a.m. All the drugs and stuff seem to have found some common ground.

Look, I’m not recommending drugs.  In fact, I hate all that pharmacy shit: pills and capsules.  It’s all poison. If there’s any kids reading this, I’ll tell you right now: Stay away from drugs. ‘Nuff said.

This is going to be one of those nights; I can feel it. The Great American Night. A fine automobile, a lunatic for a companion, a damn near full moon and the unknown lying just ahead.

(To be continued)