Diamond Dogs

FICTION FRIDAY (Short provocative originals.)

[NOTE: The following story contains trash talk about sex, drugs, and violence. Okay for you, not your kids.]

When Landon made a buy from Cole he didn’t run off like the guy had leprosy.

He’d sit with him in his North Charleston duplex watching him reset his turntable, working through his collection of Bowie albums on vinyl, listening to his glory days stories above the din of Starman or Under Pressure.

Maybe even watch a ballgame on his flat screen, though Cole would be getting calls every ten minutes and visitors every twenty. Landon remembered thinking at the time, thug life-- not so relaxing. But it was better than partying with amateurs. After his divorce, aside from the rare hook-ups, Landon stopped going out altogether. Just hung with Cole if he needed a change of scenery from work or his apartment. Drinking with civilians was donkey work anyway. You went to a bar got the first one down looking for the second but trying not to seem too eager. You got the second down and there was even less relief, yet a third too soon was like warning bells on the fire wagon that your puckering irritated face didn’t just need a few drinks at the end of a hard week, it needed oxygen. Better to be among pros. Concentrate on what was important.

Landon had been introduced to Cole by the paper’s sports editor Earle, a committed stoner with a precisely, sculpted god-like afro and wafting 24/7 weed reek, that made Landon suspiciously hungry just sitting next to him in the newsroom. But Earle wrote so gorgeously of the heat and heartbreak of local sporting contests many feared he might someday stop, and the poet within might vanish like a pot smoke memory. Cole had played a couple seasons of minor league ball with the River Dogs in the South Atlantic League, thus the initial connection to Earle, but got dropped after pissing hot one too many times. Cole, didn’t seem so disappointed, made a lot more money selling weed and coke transited up through the Miami pipeline. Thus, the ongoing connection to Earle.

Cole had a code of ethics when it came to his drug trade, didn’t move meth, smack or even opioids and told Landon about it nearly every time he came by to buy an eight-ball or two as they sat for their post-buy ritual.

“Look bro, I don’t want nobody’s blood on my hands,” Cole would say, pushing Landon on the shoulder as they shared a couple gratis lines on Cole’s brown, fold-up card table. “You don’t know what’s in that shit. Probably Fentanyl from China. Hunert times more powerful than smack.”

His eyes bristled with coke-intensity, despite the dark circles of one too many nights without sleep or … was it, eyeliner? Cole loved Bowie almost as much as his blow. He leaned back tapped his right nostril to better suck in the load on the left. Handed a clipped, clear-plastic drinking straw to Landon and gestured for him to take his turn.

“And don’t get me started on the pills. Back when I was with the Dogs, more en half my teammates were taking Oxy or Perc for their shoulders or knees. Couldn’t function without it.”

Landon, nodded, but never hid his skepticism at cynical attempts to dress up dirty business; international conventions that tried to make wars more humane or … codes that qualified the value or damage of one psychoactive substance over another. He sucked up his line, tapped his nose as Cole had done, let his eyes wander around the room though he’d seen it many times before.

He returned his gaze to Cole. “I get the smack thing,” Landon said, especially with everyone OD’ing left and right. But how come you don’t move meth? It’s essentially the same thing as Adderall. What they give to ADD kids. It’s just one carbon atom away. And this shit,” Landon gestured at the new row of lines, Cole had just chopped and spread on the table, “is expensive. Where’s the egalitarian in you?”

“EE-gal-uh-terry-on,” Cole repeated, enunciating like he was trying the word out, laughed hard, at the sound of it. He was deep into the binge; a time Landon knew was tricky to navigate. Your dealer’s brain on a dopamine seesaw while you’re sitting across from him equally inoculated against emotional balance and prudent reaction.

“Fuck Landon, mixing your chop with essays on social equality.” Cole, shook his head dismissively before he drew his straw down another line along with the usual post nasal-dance, then piping up. “Correction, mixing my chop…what kind of asshole does that make you?”

“A thinking man’s asshole,” Landon answered quiz-show, quick.

“So, your shit comes outcha mouth too, is whatya mean,” Cole murdered him. Then more thoughtful, turned the question back.  “You ever done ice?”

Landon, heavy-lidded nonchalance as he took the straw from Cole. Meth had been Ohio’s state animal, flower and song all rolled in one. The crystal lining of the Midwest’s rustbelt.  Until opioids dethroned it. Seemed to makes sense. Why keeping revving yourself up when there was no work to go around. A state with massive unemployment a few prospects. Who could deny the earnest, god-fearing, exhausted citizens of Ohio from going down the Oxy hole after so many years on the tweak.

“Yeah, Landon stood up to do a line of his own at the card table, “you have some real bat-shit thoughts when you’re on meth, but at least there’s quantity.”

“Cracker pu-leez,” Cole said, prepared to visualize his story, an over-eager member of summer stock theater. “Starts out all ‘look at me I’m Pickle Rick,’ smartest man in the universe and then…” he slapped his right hand down hard in a karate chop into his open left palm, “cut ta two days later and you’re duckin' out the way of the flying monkeys in your living room and moshing to a death metal soundtrack only you can hear. All tight and shriveled up ‘cause you ain’t ate or drank nothing in 48 hours—and here’s the worst, still, still, still…” he emphasized the repetition, “still…you won’t pull that fucking pipe from your mouth cause every wisp makes ya cock shudder like its Godzilla’s tail one swing from destroying Tokyo.” He nodded. Case closed.

Landon laughed hard. Genuine. Cole was a master performer. However good he’d been on the mound or not, Landon was pretty certain he always had the attention of the fans.

“Being alone with your thoughts is good sometimes,” Landon jumped on the riff, the coke-chatty in him now kicking-in. “But being alone with your thoughts on meth is like being locked in a bathroom with a sociopath that won’t stop masturbating.”

“Oh, so you’ve seen my video,” Cole said, feigning pride. “It’s very popular.  Almost 280 views. Tell your mama thanks again for watching.”  Cole slapped Landon’s shoulder in a just kidding gesture.

Though they always did drugs when they were together, he and Cole didn’t always talk them. Sometimes Cole asked him about the wars. He was always chatty from the blow anyway and what else were they going to talk about? Baseball? Landon never said, but he hated the ex-pro-athlete’s former sport. The only game he hated more was golf.  Old war stories were an easy chat choice over either of those sleeping-pills disguised as athletics. He actually enjoyed telling some; the accidental airdrop of lady’s pumps to the Mujahidin? Insane! Soldiers drowning in the middle of the desert? Tragic irony! An insurgent so doped up it took an entire platoon’s intersecting field of fire and six grenades to bring him down. Commitment! But usually, just a few minutes into any of them they’d be so juiced up and thrumming that they’d fly past each other in individual monologues, neither able to shut up or listen and they’d have throttle back, regain their footing with a couple of shots from the magnum bottle of Evan Williams on the table between them.

Once Landon had told Cole the story of his capture and brief captivity at the hands of Saddam Hussein’s Fedayeen in Iraq. A moment for Landon that embodied the taunting, duality of war in which the terrifying fear of death was seamlessly joined with the thrill of its near avoidance. It took place in the first few days of the U.S. invasion after he and his unilateral colleagues got lost in the desert chasing the U.S. Third-Infantry’s main invasion force. They mistakenly drove up to an Iraqi checkpoint manned by Saddam Loyalists and seconds later found themselves on their knees with AK47’s muzzle at their heads. They were only saved by their remarkably brave and quick-thinking Kurdish fixer. And he did it not by begging for their lives, but threatening the Fedayeen with an even worse death. Bluffing that an American commando unit was mopping up just a few kilometers behind them with orders to leave no injured or alive Iraqis in the invasion’s wake. Only dead ones.

Despite the drama of the tale Cole only heard -- or processed -- the part about the gun muzzles. Taking it as a cue to pull out his own matte black Sig Sauer P229 from a Kydex clip holster tucked in the small of his back hidden by an oversized bowling shirt. He dropped the clip and slid back the action to eject the round in the pipe, catching it in the air before presenting it to Landon to inspect.

“I don’t want my fingerprints on that shit.” Landon would say, seemingly joking, but deadly serious. The implications of him being connected to a known drug dealer’s gun went nowhere good.

The routine itself was impressive and Landon believed that Cole had definitely seen it on some crime show on TV and practiced for hours while home alone.

“Hope I never have to use it,” Cole said, taking it back after the first time he showed it to Landon. “But you know how much a kilo of chop costs wholesale these days?” Landon shook his head. “Twenty-five, thurty-thousand. Who wouldn’t be tempted to take a run at me either holding the dosh or the product?” Landon nodded, was getting impatient, ready to leave, knew when the gun came out Cole’s seesaw was dipping too far to one end or the other. But he also wanted to avoid offending. Cole could smell furtive on any customer and Landon didn’t want to lose all that good will he earned by simply being decent, not transposing his own self-disgust onto the man who provided the raw material for it. And maybe, Landon mulled through his memory, he’d made all those trips to Cole’s and hung out for something that had nothing to do with their private party at all. Maybe he was seeking another fleeting thrill that made all others hopelessly insignificant. It had been a Wednesday night that year in September on a date he never shared with anyone. His birthday.

They were doing exactly what they were doing now. He was watching Cole singing and dancing to Bowie in the middle of his North Charleston living room as usual, but this night the show was all Diamond Dogs.  

“Rebel Rebel, you've torn your dress, Rebel Rebel, your face is a mess, Rebel Rebel, how could they know?” Cole’s eyes were ringed black with mascara, he wore cut-off jean shorts, a white ribbed, tank top and a modest (for a drug dealer) pinkie-thick, loop of gold chain around his neck. His shoulder-length blond hair pulled back from his face by a backwards RiverDogs ballcap, Charlie T. the mascot with a bat in his mouth, snapping down like it’s a dry twig. Cole was also barefoot and Landon knew what was coming next. Had seen versions of this performance or others like it several times before. Cole gripped his mic, a 34-inch, maple-wood Louisville Slugger at the smooth-convex curve just beneath the knob and bent down low to where Landon, his sole audience member, was sunken into one of two matching blue suede La-Z Boy recliners. Landon grimaced as Cole belted out the final sting of the chorus, “Hot tramp, I love you so! Don’t ya?” Cole immediately launched into a rooster cluck walk back and forth across the room for the bridge, pulling the knob of the bat back to his mouth, “Doo doo doo-doo doo doo doo doo.”  Landon pumped his fist in support, but his real attention was on the powdery grid that crisscrossed a framed 11x14 mirror-etched image lying on his lap. It was Cole during his playing days, left-arm cocked back like a trebuchet, ready to hurl from the River Dogs mound. More than the Bowie performances, Landon silently admired the willful disregard Cole had for his former life, choosing to snort blow off the souvenirs of his own failed past. He was no longer contained by the chalk lines of baseball diamonds but redrew his own fields more lucrative dangerous and exotic, not counted in innings or pitches or times at bat, but in moments like this one in that couldn’t be full described or explained, but which followed only one rule, that it would all happen at double-speed, careen wildly off course and end with a crash.

What could be more liberating than knowing how it ends? Landon set the mirror back on the fold-up card table between the two recliners that held their Pabst cans, and omni-present magnum-bottle of Evan Williams encircled by a large condensation ring, his TV and stereo remotes and the Sig.

Cole picked up the straw from the mirror, bent over the table and inhaled two more thick lines, one in each nostril, before going back to the performance. “You've got your mother in a whirl cause she's not sure if you’re a boy or a girl…” All the fun of a drag show without the explanations. But unfortunately for both of them Rebel, Rebel was the last cut on the A side of Diamond Dogs record and that meant one thing; a Cole monologue before another Cole performance.

Landon liked the performances better. The rest was just gibberish, hyper-talk on a tightrope. And Landon knew where the slips could lead: Cole’s angry rants, Cole’s crying jigs, Cole’s occasional threats of violence, sometimes against Landon, sometimes against himself. The performances kept those risky channels of Cole’s brain occupied. Bowie was enough, more than enough, as long as the needle was in the groove. As long as the vinyl was spinning. As long as there was no dissension. But that was another problem with coke. Not with Cole, but with Landon. On coke Landon liked to sow dissension. Something his professional life didn’t allow. You could poke and prod a source. You could and should be skeptical of a source, but it had to appear to come from a place of fairness, a place where the source felt you hadn’t fully made up your mind yet (even if you had). Outright disagreement, dissent, well…that shut the whole thing down. End of conversation, game over. But here, in Cole’s living room, doing Cole’s coke Landon wasn’t on the job. Here he was free to disagree and he liked, in some ways, what it provoked in Cole, but liked even more how it made him feel.  Like a participant. No, more like an Agent Provocateur.

“Landon,” Cole said, as he lifted the turntable’s clear, plastic lid and flipped the vinyl but set the stylus on its resting clip rather than back on the vinyl. “You know why I love this album?”

“Lemme guess, because its Bowie.”

“Yeah, dickhead. Who else is there? But why this Bowie album?”

Landon braced himself. Bent over the mirror on the table and drew in another line, thick as a freeway center-divider, followed by a final swig that emptied his can of Pabst. He used the La-Z Boy’s side stick to lower the leg rest, got up and went to the fridge where he retrieved two more cans of beer, tossing one to Cole, who snapped it up in one hand, showing admirable eye-hand coordination this late into their partying. Landon cracked his open, sat back down.

“Okay, now I’m ready. Tell me. Wait!” Landon teased, holding up his hands to stop Cole. “It’s because it’s Diamond Dogs, right?  And YOU,” he hit it hard, “were a baseball diamond dog.” Cole was silent for a beat. And Landon wasn’t sure what was coming. Had he provoked him that quickly? First time at bat?

“That’s fucking brilliant. I didn’t even think of that. But it adds to my stoke.” Cole sometimes dipped into surfer patois, reminded Landon that for a drug dealer like Cole, time spent on the waves of nearby Folly Beach was like a CEO spending time on the links. Both great places to make deals.

Cole’s eyes looked more intense than Landon was comfortable with at this hour. Meaning he’d want to party the whole night and Landon had still had to work tomorrow. He’d wake up feeling shaky, weak, translucent, his body drained, his brain depleted of dopamine, his blood wondering why the alcohol spigot was now shut off.  So, he’d have to appease it. Always tried to keep a couple grams in reserve, so a line or two and a shot and a beer all before 8am and he’d at least be able to get into the shower, blow out his clogged and constricted nasal passages, brush his furry teeth, half dozen drops of Visine in each eye and like Roy Scheider as Bob Fosse in All That Jazz. “It’s showtime!”  Some birthday celebration.

But that was getting ahead of himself. They hadn’t even gotten through this evening yet. He could put off the full-blown regret for a few hours at least, there was still bourbon on the table, half a case of beer in the fridge and at a good percentage of the eight-ball they started with covering most of the image of Cole frozen in his mid-pitch glory days.

“Diamond Dogs was like this weird fusion, Dude,” Cole continued with his explanation. “Bowie’s last gasp of glam melded with Orwell’s 1984. You know, Big Brother and all that shit. Landon looked at him blankly. While Cole waved him off. I know, I know, I know. It’s out there,” Cole said, excitedly, “You’ll hear it all on the B side and then you’ll get it.” He went over to a set of deep shelves against the wall where he stored all his albums, alphabetically by artist. He went to the “B” section, apparent by the capital letter, “B” Cole had cut from some magazine headline and taped to the shelf under the albums it stored. From there he pulled the cover of the album currently in rotation and held it in front of Landon, who shimmied up a bit from his comfortable sag in the recliner to look. It featured a drawing of Bowie, hunched over a table looking a bit like an orange griffin and flanked by two gray-dog women with flaming red hair.

“Yeah that’s definitely some fusion shit,” Landon said.

“Dude, dude, you don’t know the half of it.” Cole then opened the album to show beneath the fold… a drawing of Bowie with clearly defined dog genitalia. Cole held the cover reverently, as if he were presenting a rare and fragile newly discovered, Dead Sea scroll.

“Cole, I’m a little worried,” Landon said, lifting his beer can to indicate the surprise reveal on the album cover. “You like this album because Bowie has a cartoon dog dick on its cover?”

“Dude, do you know how rare this cover art is? I spent five-kay to get this.”

“Okay, now I’m really worried about you.”

Cole continued, undeterred. Insistent. “When the album dropped in 1974, there were only a few originals like this. Most LPs got painted over. This is one of the few that still exists, man!” Landon considered what Cole was telling him. Considered whether he wanted to play nice. Landon nodded, then bent down over the mirror and did two more lines, tapping each nostril before responding. Had his answer.

“How do you know it’s real?”

Cole stood completely frozen. Blinked a couple of times.  A wild rhino stunned by a  tranq dart. Landon, smiled. “If it’s that rare and valuable, only make sense there would be some fakes, right?” Cole snapped out of the stun, face flushed red. Closed the album, put it back on the shelf.

“I know it’s real because I spent five-kay on it. Because I gotta fucking-certificate-of-fucking authen-tissity!” He shouted, spittle flying over the card table onto the mirror, little dabs breaking up the line. “That’s how I know it’s real.” Anger not dissipated, he grabbed his Louisville Slugger leaning against the wall, took swings in the air. Close enough for Landon to feel the whoosh of air on his face. Would crack it if he leaned down to do the line. He held his position, growing annoyed at Cole’s antics.

“Wall-eyed motherfucker!” Landon knew he shouldn’t, but here, in Cole’s living room he could create chaos from a recliner, push things to the brink and bring back a little of that adrenaline that the coke fell short in summoning. Besides, Cole just went to the dark side on him. Landon bent forward rubbed his face in his hands like he was praying, felt the exhaustion spreading through his entire body.

Landon sighed. “For the last time its hypertropia. Take a good hard look.” Landon pointed at his right eye with his index finger leaning closer to Cole. “Points up, not out.” Cole, look confused, unsettled for a moment, until Landon pressed on. “And hate to say it dude, but you got worked on that …” pointing to the cover, then he paused, felt the flush of anger from a thousand insults never answered, fuck it,  “… dog dick masterpiece. You know same way you did on the mound.”

Cole stopped swinging, leaned the bat back against the wall, walked to the turntable and cranked the volume to the point Landon thought the floor was vibrating. Cole strode back to the table between the recliners and bent down to do his own two lines, but when he came back up, he was holding the Sig and pointing it at Landon’s face.

“Why you trying to spin me up, bra?” Cole demanded, but flatly calm now. Landon looked up but didn’t react. “I let you suck up mountains of my best chop, drink my bourbon,” he waved the muzzle pointing over at the three-quarters empty bottle on the card table. “And show your gratitude by yanking my chain?” Cole leaned in closer with the pistol. Landon kept a blank face but heard the trill of a thousand insects inside his forebrain. This was the buzz he came for. He cocked his head slightly, looked down the dark muzzle, wondering if this was really the abyss yet? He stared impassively until Cole’s hand began to shake, the weight of the gun and the spike of the blow on his heart no friend to accuracy. Even at this close. Maybe Cole’s tremor might just disfigure rather than complete a dramatic exit. No glamor in that. Landon shuddered at the thought of  explaining the joke in perpetuity through gnarled lips to the curious and dull. He raised his Pabst can and tapped it gently against the muzzle of Cole’s Sig, but then held it there. Pushed the southpaw’s aim away from his face. Then he stood up, wrapped his arms over Cole’s. He looked up into the man’s pulsing, ticking pupils, watching, waiting for them to calm, the violence behind them to seep away. Nature’s Oxytocin disarming  chemical dopamine. When it did he whispered into Cole’s ear.

“Just fucking with you. Love ya, bra.” Cole went limp in his arms, tossed the pistol back on the card table. Cole hugged back. A giant bear hug by a giant coked-up teddy bear.

“Just fucking with you too, bra. Love you, bra. Ashamed now by what he’d said, Cole scanned his stuttering brainwaves for ways to make Landon forget. “I was thinking you should do a story about me and my Bowie collection. Best in Charleston.”

“I know it is bra,” Landon assured him. “I know it is. But now I gotta go. Get some sleep before I have a heart attack.” He turned to the table, poured them both another shot of Evan Williams, then held up the glasses. Cole took one and they clinked them together.

“Bowie!”

“Bowie!”

Cole went over to the turntable and put the stylus another track. Cranking up “Rock ‘n Roll with me” to an ungodly volume. Then from the floor several loud thumps like a ceiling being poked with the end of a broom handle.

Cole responded, churning the thick-end of his bat onto his own living room floor. “My Fucking tenant,” Cole said. The tenant responded with three more thumps of his own. To Landon it was the dull faraway sound of mortars. Cole reached for his Sig. Landon pushed his hand away, then kissed it like the Pope’s ring and walked out the door, twisted grin on his face. Wished he could find in the new morning an allegorical rebirth, some small, good thing, regardless of how derivative, a journey whose path led elsewhere, but started as others had--with a taste of warm, fresh bread.

-END-

If you liked what you just read and want more, order Kevin Sites’s award-winning, debut novel The Ocean Above Me, available at the link below.
https://www.amazon.com/Ocean-Above-Me-Novel/dp/0063278286