Helpless Little Things

She's

sweet.

She's

vulnerable.

She's

a

con

man's

wet

dream—

and

his

worst nightmare

I fucking hate Portland. So earnest and smug. There was a Portland guy here in Shelton on a meth pop, and even he had it—that too-sweet-to-believe thing. Like a lot of chalkers, the dude's teeth were rotted, so he couldn't say his r's. I used to fuck with him about it.

So you 're from Poland!'

Po'tland, the dude would say calmly.

So you prefer being called Polish or Polack?

No. I'm f'om Po'tland.

Fuck off, Polack.

Then one day on yard, someone racked that poor helpless meth head for standing too close and knocked out two of those black hol­low uppers. It was weird—afterward he could say his fs again, but he had a low humming whistle when­ever he spoke. I called him Kenny G after that. He actually believed this was an improvement.

I suppose I've hated Portland since I took a pop there. It was a shame too, because it was the per­fect Portland scam. A guy in my building was a volunteer recruiter for Greenpeace, and one day when he left his car unlocked I stole a bunch of pamphlets and sign-up logs. I couldn't use that stuff in Seattle so I drove down to Union Station in Portland, where I picked out two runaways who looked old enough to be college students. I put the kids in downtown Portland, trolling for Lexus-and-Rockport money. There was this girl, a little redhead named Julie, and a loaf named Kevin. I put gay Kevin on Burnside a block from Powell's and sweet Julie on Broad­way, in front of Nordstrom.

Kevin was okay—friendly, made good eye contact—but Julie was the find: 19, short curly hair and what looked like a decent body under her hippie dress. She'd been kicked out of her house for accusing her stepdad of feeling her up, and while I'd heard that story a hundred times, it was harsh coming from her because, like a lot of good-looking girls, she seemed convinced it was her fault.

I figured the bookstore would be the better place, but it wasn't even close to Julie's haul at Nord­strom—no one more eager to help the environment than a guilty white liberal dropping 60 on a tie. But then I switched them, and Julie kicked ass at the book­store, too. No, it was all her. She had something—I don't know—a genuine vulnerability.

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Helpless

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It was almost too easy. I had the kids stop shoppers, flash a brochure and ask them to sign up for Greenpeace. We didn't actually want the fish to say yes, but if they did, the kids had them fill out a long sign­up form and still the mark usually dug out a 10 for the stop-the-whaling fund. But most people are in too big a hurry, so they'd rather give a onetime donation. This was the cash side of the business— fives, 10s, 20s, a few 50s. I printed up tax-deduction receipts off the IRS website, and this helped convince people we were legitimate. On the first day alone, Kevin got almost 400, and Julie took in six and a quarter. I chopped my half, five bills for running the thing, and then sold Kevin a half ounce of weed from the trunk of my car for the rest of his take, at a decent profit. I tried to sell Julie some bud, too, but she looked away. / need money a lot more than I need pot, Danny.

Of course, some shoppers got suspi­cious and didn't want to give us cash, or claimed they had none. This was good. I told the kids: Make them give you the thing you're taking. So they'd say that Greenpeace discouraged credit cards and checks, then wrinkle their brows and say, "But I guess...if you have ID," as if the person had insisted. Nothing kills suspi­cion like suspicion.

This was the real haul: checks, which we used to make templates for phony checking accounts, and especially credit cards. I gave the kids 10 bucks for every card number they gol, but I got 40 apiece from a guy in Mexico. In two weeks I had given him 39. Give me your number and I can have four grand run on that card in Mexico before you put away your wallet.

All of this was a nice and profitable diversion from my real business, the thing I've done since I quit college my freshman year—running bud down from B.C. My territory was Washington and Oregon, from the Canadian border all the way down 1-5, eight regular stops on the Green Corridor: Bellingham, Seat­tle, Tacoma, Olympia, Portland, Salem, Eugene and Ashland. Two trips a week, up and back, meant two nights a week in the midpoint, Portland. People have in their minds a picture of a bud smug­gler—white-boy dreads, Marley T-shirt— but I'd be a moron to dress like that for 15 hundred miles a week with six kilos in the trunk. I wore a plain suit and kept my hair short, hard-parted on the side, like a '50s superhero. But the key was my car: I had to be the youngest man in America rocking a loaded gray '06 Buick Lucerne. Cop could pull me over blazing a spliff, coke spoon up my nose, syringe hanging from my tied-off arm, dead hooker in the passenger seat, and still just tell me to ease off the gas and have a nice day.

No game works forever, of course, and I knew this Greenpeace scam could bust a hundred ways: Kids steal from me, some

fish gets suspicious and calls his credit-card company, real Greenpeacies get wind. I put the half-life at three months. This was early November, so I figured to run the game through Christmas—when the banks and credit-card companies are too busy to notice the extra draws—make a little side money and move on. In the meantime I was careful. On my return run through Portland I always collected the Greenpeace material so the kids couldn't freelance. I moved Julie and Kevin around a lot and worked hard to stay away from the real fund-raisers.

And once each, I had Julie and Kevin strip in front of me—this was one of my old weed-dealing precautions—to make sure they weren't holding any money back. This is drastic stuff, but done right it only has to happen once. It makes a real impact, kid standing in front of you freezing his ass off while you go through his clothes. 1 learned it from the guy who recruited me. You make the mule stand there while you ignore him to look through his clothes. It's not the search; it's standing there naked that gets to him. With a dealer, the last part of this humiliation is having him spread his ass cheeks—not because I suspect anything's up there, but just so the kid knows how far I'll go. Like a jail search. The guy who did me took it a step further, split my ass with a cold handgun. Of course Kevin and Julie weren't muling drugs, so I didn't need to check their asses, and I didn't carry a gun, anyway, but I wanted to send the same message. You're nothing to me. Meat.

Now I'll be the first to admit it. I was kind of looking forward to this with little Julie. It wasn't like she had a strip­per's body; she was tiny, almost sickly. 1 wasn't into the waif thing, but there was something about the way she moved, like poured syrup. I couldn't help being curious about what lay underneath all those clothes.

Like my car, I chose my hotel rooms carefully. No sketchy motels on the out­skirts of town for me. In Portland. I always took a room at the Heathman downtown. I liked the porters in their beefeater cos­tumes, and I liked sitting on the mezza­nine by the fire, drinking Chivas and making eyes with the married busi­nesswomen. That's what did it for me, women in suits, not little homeless girls. On my first night at the Heathman. I hit a blonde, married prescription-drug rep—impeccable makeup, Pilates-hard ass. I'm in the same business. I told her. I wouldn't be surprised if they had to re-drywall my room after we finished banging around in it.

I was a month into my Portland gig when I called Julie up to my room at the Heathman. I sat spread-legged on the big fluff)' bed and told her to take every­thing off. I'd strip-searched Kevin a week earlier and he'd thrown a fit—Danny, how could you think I'd steal from \ou?—but Julie didn't say a word. Her eyes just got big and she nodded slightly, turned away

from me, looked out the window and started unbuttoning. Her hands were shaking. I couldn't believe how many lav-ers she wore—wool scarves and flannel and Army surplus and little cotton pant­ies. And there she was. Just her...pale litde body, skinny freckled arms. She was shivering. When she turned away shyly, I could see every disk in her spine. Her shoulder blades were like two drawn-in wings. In fact, it was her back that got to me, that little back tapering down to this tiny waist, which I could've put my two hands completely around if I'd wanted, could have lifted her up and....

She started crying in these jerking little

hiccups. Please, don't make me------She didn't

finish. Tears curled over her cheeks.

God, she was small. Not a tattoo or a ring anywhere. I said, I just need to make sure you're not stealing from me. I've never felt so horny and so shitty at the same time. I turned away as I went through her clothes. They were warm.

Hell, I knew she wasn't stealing from me; she was outdrawing Kevin two-to-one. And it's no wonder she thought I was going to fuck her. These were the rules I was operating under: When you're steal­ing from people, you assume people are stealing from you. And sex? Just another thing to steal.

I'm sorry, Julie, I wanted to say, but all I managed was: It's oka\. Get dressed now.

I hadn't touched her, and still the strip search changed things between Julie and me. She stopped meeting my eyes. Even her take started to go down. I'd watch her from coffee shops and it was like she was shrinking. Where before she stepped up to fish confidently, now she huddled against the wall, waiting for them to make eye contact with her. Soon Kevin was out-drawing her. This happens to dealers, too; they lose nerve and start shrinking, and one day they're done.

Played out. Whole thing was played out.

It rains in Portland, probably as much as in Seattle, although it doesn't have the shitty reputation for it. The downtown is half again too funky and half again too clean: Black-clad white kids skate in spot­less parks and the packed light-rail trains hum quietly on busy tree-lined streets past old warehouses and tenements gen-trified into lofts and nightclubs and art galleries. Fuckin' city creeps up on you. and you start to believe you could fit in there. You could live there.

Then, one day in mid-December, toward the end of the deal, I bought Julie and Kevin each a slice of pizza at the place across from Powell's. I explained that we were going to have to quit after Christmas but that I wanted to use them for some other things. I wasn't really going to use Kevin again, but you want a guy like that to think that you might have more work for him so that he stays loyal. As for Julie, I had been forming this idea in my head. It was probably stupid, but I spent so many nights in Portland, and since it was the halfway point of my bud

route, rather than pay for a hotel every time, maybe 1 could get a little apartment, have Julie take care of it for me. Purely business. So...if you're up for doing something else, I said Julie's way.

I'm up for anything. Kevin said quickly.

Julie said nothing.

How about \ou? I asked her.

You don't want her. Kevin said, and he snickered.

It seemed Kevin and Julie had some sort of secret. She shoved him like she was try­ing to shush a seven-year-old.

What's goin' on? 1 asked.

Julie gave her money to Greenpeace, Kevin said, and then he broke into laughter.

She just stared at the ground as Kevin told me the story. There was this shaggy hippie market every Saturday in Old Town, and Julie had apparently dragged Kevin down there over the weekend to show him something. It turned out there was a real Greenpeace booth under the Burnside Bridge, and Julie had stood there reading the material and looking at these dread-locked white kids behind the booth—so earnest, such believers—and then she just...freaked. Lost it. She took the money she'd saved from our gig, almost 12 hun­dred bucks, and donated it.

To save the fucking whales.

Christ, Julie, I said.

Bui that's not all, Kevin said. Then she tried to get me to donate my money, too. This was the part that really broke him up.

As Kevin told the story Julie's eyes got

bleary again. It made me feel better, she said quietly. Then to Kevin: / thought you might want to feel better, too.

I feel fine, Kevin said, and he bit into his pizza.

Julie, I asked gently. Do you think what we've been doing is wrong?

She gave a tiny nod.

Well, I said, it IS wrong, Julie. Then I leaned forward. I'm the West Coast distributor of wrong. I could tell you that what we're doing is no different than what other businesses do, that Microsoft or Nordstrom, they're just another kind of scam, some shit like that. I could tell you a million lies, Julie, but I'm not gonna do that. I'm just gonna ask you one simple question:

Do you think for one second those kids at that market can save a fucking whale?

She swallowed and looked down. I never saw her anymore without thinking of that tapered little back, those freckles, chin pointed down, sniffling away the tears. They can try.

Oh, come on. You know better than that. You know this is a hard goddamn world. You know what the world does to helpless things, don't you, Julie?

Yes, she whispered to her lap.

That's right, I said. You know. Those whales are fucked. So. I say, Fuck the businessmen and fuck Nordstrom and fuck your creepy step-dad and fuck your blind mother! And fuck my old man. too, while we're at it, son of a bitch bounced me around for breakfast every other fuckin' day. Well, fuck them all. And if you wanna go home to your mom and her husband.

if you wanna go save the fucking whales, then fuck you, too, Julie. Fuck you!

Now I've given the Fuck You speech—or some variation—a dozen times or more. But I've never had happen what happened with little Julie. She jerked a little when I mentioned her stepdad and then, alter staring at the table a few more seconds, she stood up. Okay, Dann\. she said. Thanks.

And just like that, she walked away.

/ know a girl we can get, Kevin said.

I just sat there watching her walk off, thinking about the sliver of girl who lived under those clothes—that back, that waist— and wishing I'd said something else. So this was it. We were done. I told Kevin I'd see him in two days, when I came back through town, but I didn't figure to see either of them ever again.

That week I picked up my regular load in Bellingham and started south. I made my drop in Seattle and collected the money, and made my drop in Olympia and collected the money. I drove south on 1-5, Portland creeping up on me. I hadn't been able to stop thinking about little Julie. And I didn't really plan to do it, but I got off the freeway and dros'e to the bus station, where I'd met her five weeks earlier.

She wasn't there, but Kevin was. I tried to casually ask about Julie.

She got the shit kicked out oj her, he said.

What? Who did it?

He shrugged. He said Julie sometimes hung out in this boho coffee shop in Old Town, so I gave Kevin a free eighth for his trouble, and drove into Old Town, and sure enough, that's where I found her, in this foul, patchouli-smelling shit hole, reading a book of poems, all wrapped up in those layers of hippie clothes. When I got closer I could see a yellowing bruise below her eye. And her bottom lip was swollen.

She flinched when she saw me.

Who tliefuck did this? I asked.

She looked confused. No one.

And that's when I knew. You went home, didn V \ou ? After I told you to. Did your step-dad do this, Julie?

Those tears slipped again. She stared down at her lap and sobbed.

I sat in the booth next to her and put my arms around her, carefully. I touched her gingerly, like she was made of glass. It's okay, 1 said.

I took her to the Heathman. When the valet tipped his silly British hat to her, she smiled. I took her upstairs so she could shower and clean up. I wanted to be in that room, but 1 also didn't want to be in that room. So I went to Nordstrom and bought her some clothes. When I got back she was staring out the window again, this time wearing the white terry-cloth hotel robe, cinched around that tiny waist. I left the clothes on the bed and told her I'd be downstairs in the mezzanine.

The clothes were too big—a pair of black pants, a sweater and a heavy coat—I should have gone to the kids' section. But she didn't seem to mind. We ate on the mezzanine, in front of the lire. She glanced up at me a few times over the tall menu. Smiled. She was a vegetarian. Ordered sun-dried-tomato pasto ravioli. I wanted to kick the waiter's ass when he corrected her: You irwan pesto?

She ate like it was her first real meal, or her last, closing her eyes and moaning after even-bite. I was careful not to talk about anything. When we were all done, I had the valet get the car. We climbed in. It was 8:30.

I turned to face her. Told her what I wanted to do.

;Vo, she said. Please don't. It will only make it worse.

Listen, I said. / promise \ou...whatever hap­pens, this will not make it worse. I wanted to grab her hand, but I didn't. This is a hard world. Julie. That's all.

We started driving. They lived in Beaver-ton. We turned in front of this little strip mall; she smiled and pointed to the Coffee People store where she used to work. She stared out the window and seemed to shrink inside her new coat as we got closer.

7m ni here. Turn tliere. And finally, that one, she said in a whis­per. I parked in Front of a two-story white house leaning out on four big porch pillars. Everything about the house pissed me off—the Colonial bullshit black shut­ters, the Christmas lights. But what really got me was the black BMW in the drive­way. Here 1 was, lay­ing low in grandpa's fucking Buick, and this molester rolls a BMW?

Please, she said. / changed m\ mind. Don't. Let's just go.

Julie, remember how I told you wiy old man used to knock me around?

She said she remembered.

We had this old cof­feepot, one of those big aluminum percolating things...made 20 cups or something...he used to come in from the road, and I'd be eating my cereal and one day, he just clocked me, no eood reason, and for

some reason I lost it. I grabbed that fuckin' percolator by its black handle and swung as hard as I could. Right at his head. It didn't do much. Hell, I burned myself worse with the coffee that flew out. And he gave me a good pounding right after, but you know what? It was worth it. Because every time I saw the dent in that coffeepot. I knew this: that I was gonna survh'e that fucker.

I grabbed her little shoulders. Her bottom lip was quivering. Look, Julie. I'm just gonna talk to him. I'm not going to hurt him. Okay?

She nodded a little, then grabbed me and hugged me. Even under the sweater and the new coat 1 could feel that tiny back, and as wrong as it was, I was turned on. and I couldn't wait to do this and get back to the Hcaihman. She was shaking. I'm cold, she whispered, will you leave the heat on? I

cranked the heat, pushed her gently back into her seat and climbed out.

I walked up to the house and rang the bell. There was a little reindeer next to the door. Honestly, I didn't know exactly how far I was planning to go. I really did just want to scare the guy, but when he answered the d(x>r, something about him set me off.

He was probably 50, with black hair parted on the side like mine. He was in good shape, but his face was flabby, like he'd recently lost a bunch of weight.

Can I help you? he asked.

Can I help you? After that, it was like my hands belonged to someone else. I pushed him backward into the house. Can you help me? Can you fuckin' help me?

He fell. Scrambled backward. Tried to kick the door shut, but 1 booted it open.

I kicked him in the side. It made a dull sound, like someone clapping with gloves on. Yeah, you can help me, you fuckin' child molester. And that's when 1 realized that 1 was going to kill this guy. Now I've done some shit, but I'd never killed a guy before.

But I knew that I simply couldn't stop until he couldn't hurt Julie anymore.

He crab crawled toward the steps. Del).'

And this woman called from upstairs, Carl?

Slay in your Jticking room. Deb! I yelled up the stairs. And I thought about stopping someone's life, just...ending it, and I kicked him again, harder, in the ribs. This one took the wind out of him, and he collapsed against the stairs. I grabbed his hair and gave his face a short bounce on the stairs. God, I wanted to kill him. But I thought of Deb upstairs and

Julie in the car and I remembered my prom­ise to her, and more than anything 1 wanted her back in the Heathman, and in the apart­ment where she would be waiting for me, so I gathered myself and I bent down and took this old pervert by his hair again and I said into his ear: You ever touch her again and I'll kill you so slowly that you won't ei'en realize you're dead. Do you understand me, Stepdad?

Yes, he said. Please....

And even though I wanted to keep stomping him to dust, I stood up and just stared down at him. His shaking arms cov­ered his blood-gobbed face.

Restraint: That's what keeps a guy like me in business. I started for the door. On the foyer walls were pictures of Deb and Carl and two little kids. Christ, I thought, ass­holes don't even have a picture of her up.

Maybe that's when I knew. Or maybe it was a second later, when I stepped out onto the front porch.

The Lucerne was gone. I stood there a minute doing the math. I patted my suit coat. My wallet was gone. The hug. I'm cold. In a hatch in the trunk there was 60 grand in cash from my Seattle, Olympia and Portland drops. I hadn't made the Salem, Eugene and Ashland drops, so that meant there was another 30 or 40 thousand in weed behind that hatch.

Every pop is bad luck. Who'd have thought, for instance, that as nice as that neighborhood was, a cop could afford to live nearby? But a property-crimes detective was kitty-corner and Deb had apparently called him from upstairs. So while I stood on the porch doing the math, this fat son of a

bitch came huffing across the street, yelling and drawing down on me. 1 had no choice but to drop and put my arms out.

1 was smiling as he put the handcuffs on me, and smiling still when they threw me in the overnight tank with meth-twitching chalkers and mumbling drunk-ies, and smiling still the next morning when they hauled me in front of the stern judge who arraigned me on first-degree assault charges.

My public defender said that I really scared poor Carl, who, coincidentally, was the stepfather to those kids in the picture. I showed suitable regret, bonded out and eventually pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault with a big fine and restitution but no jail time. 1 sent Carl a letter of apology, and he was pretty cool about it. 1 told the

truth—that I'd had the wrong house. Of course, I had to replace the Lucerne and make good on the money and dope that Julie stole, but in a way I could see that I had been lucky. Shit, what if I'd killed poor Carl? For nothing.

I fucking hated Portland after that. 1 started staying in Eugene. I did stop in Port­land a few times to ask around about her, but I knew she was long gone. In fact, it was sort of like she'd never existed. I found that puff Kevin working at a Quiznos sandwich shop, but it was clear she'd played him, too. He didn't even know her last name. I asked about the day she got beat up and if she'd told him to tell me about it.

No, he said. She said it was nothing and that I shouldn V worry about it.

And that's what got me, in the end. How it was all so subtle. Perfectly played. I made my share of mistakes, sure—sell­ing weed to Kevin in front of her so that she figured out what was in my trunk; falling for that crying shit, telling her about my own father, leaving the car run­ning because she was cold. But it wasn't me. It was her. All her.

Make them give you the thing you want to take.

And shit, after that everything felt so.. .frag­ile. Something like that happens and it shakes your faith in people, in yourself. And once you realize how shaky and frail the world is, you start to imagine other mistakes. And when you can imagine cracks in the world? Well, then it's only a matter of time.

I had always figured the roll would come from below, but when I finally got snaked, it was by the guy on top of me, the guy 1 bought my dope from, the guy who had recruited me and taught me to search kids by sticking a gun up my ass. He'd gotten popped for something else and agreed to wear a wire for a month while they kepi him under surveillance. They even put GPS on my car to make sure they got my contacts. Four months to the day after Julie scammed me, the DEA arrested me with four pounds of sweet green bud in the back

of the new Lucerne. I pled to nine years.

Six to go.

I think about Julie a lot in here. And I think about the last night I spent in Port­land, four days before my arrest. I hadn't planned to stop there, but I was tired. And nostalgic. I guess. I had a few drinks and drove down into the Pearl District, looking at brownstone condos and townhouses, think­ing of the place I'd have rented for us. Then I got a room at the Healhman. I sat on the mezzanine and had sun-dried-tomato pesto ravioli. Next morning, I went down to Old Town for the Saturday Market. The place was just as I imagined it, fucking Portland, full of shithead artists and tie-dyed dead­heads, pottery morons selling henna tattoos and alpaca scarves and tall Goth chicks sha-kin' their hair, dudes on skateboards, and rasta-fucks playing bongos, ass-smelling ponytail-wearing hippies playing Chilean flutes—a real fucking circus.

There was no Greenpeace booth.

I was about to leave when I saw a skinny little redhead boho chick walking away from me, in a coat like the one I'd bought Julie that day. I ran after her. Hn!

I didn't know what I was going to do. I didn't feel angry—not as angry as I thought I'd be. I really just wanted to talk to her. Hey! I yelled again.

But when the girl turned, it wasn't Julie, it looked nothing like her. It was just a red­head in a coat. Yes, she said.

I'm sorry, I said. Afv mistake.

It's okay, she said.

It is a hard goddamn world.

The girl started to turn away. And I don't