Down on the Street

The Document Matters

DOWN ON THE STREET

Alec Cizak

PRAISE FOR DOWN ON THE STREET

"With Down on the Street, Alec Cizak writes the best dirtbag noir since Jed Ayres’ Peckerwood. There are delights in the darkness and you’ll hate yourself for laughing out loud, but it’s inevitable. Not an easy read for the gender studies set, but who cares what they’re reading anyway? Me, I’ll be re-reading Down on the Street. The dark, tragi-comic tale of Lester Banks bends Travis Bickle across his knees and delivers him a spanking. You won’t want it to end."—Eryk Pruitt, author or Hashtag and The Jack Off

"In tight prose and with a keen eye, Alec Cizak gives us Down on the Street, a short novel with all the roar and attitude of a rock and roll band. You won’t think of pimps the same way after reading about Lester Banks, and Cizak makes sure you’ll never forget him."—Rusty Barnes, author of Ridgerunner and Knuckledragger

"Down on the Street is a dark story about broken people brimming with bad ideas, but the characters are so compelling that it’s hard to turn away. Once you’re in Cizak’s capable hands, he’ll have you shaking your head in disbelief, gritting your teeth in horror, and begging to root for the good guys—if you could only figure out who they are. Want to take a walk of shame on the wild side? This book’s for you."—S.W. Lauden, author of Crosswise and Crossed Bones

"Alec Cizak’s Down on the Street reminds me of the darker side of Bukowski. The urban decay and skewed morals and the striving for betterment, for what lies at the end of that smog-dimmed rainbow. Here’s a writer who cares about language, about getting it right, about giving the reader something of worth. The characters are despicable. You wouldn’t want them in the same room with your children. But you’ll care about them. Even identify with their plight. And then you’ll want to reconsider your own morals and the luxuries that allowed you to have them."—Grant Jerkins, author of A Very Simple Crime and Abnormal Man

"Alec Cizak demonstrates in Down on the Street that he remains among the top fiction writers alive, regardless of genre. This is a crime story, but it’s so much more. Words like sharpened blades cut out the reader’s heart, emotionally and otherwise. I read this novella in a burst. A week later, I’m still absorbing it."—Rob Pierce, author of Uncle Dust

Copyright © 2017 by Alexander Cicak

All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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an imprint of Down & Out Books

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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Cover design by JT Lindroos

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Down on the Street

About the Author

Also by the Author

Other Titles from Down & Out Book and its Imprints

Preview from Resurrection Mall, a Penns River Crime Novel by Dana King

Preview from Gitmo by Shawn Corridan and Gary Waid

Preview from American Static, a Crime Novel by Tom Pitts

This book is dedicated to James D. Williams, my fifth-grade teacher who sold me my first typewriter

ONE

As usual, Lester Banks barely made a dime. Slow weekend. Nothing going on downtown. Only dedicated drunks wandered Broad Ripple. Fares were scarce. Too much competition. Too many cabs in a town where most folks had cars. After shelling out two hundred for rent on his taxi, he paid another fifty for gas. Company forced him to buy theirs. Twenty cents a gallon more than a regular pump. He went home with a profit of a hundred and two dollars on an eighteen-hour work day.

He lived on the west side of town. A shitty apartment building called The Palace Estates. Either a joke or, people with money in their pockets once populated the area. He had neither the time nor the care to do the research. Driving for Yellow Cab wore him out. Whatever luxury the creators of the Estates had intended, the building had become a monolith of crumbling bricks and cracked and broken windows. The wooden door frames had rotted and chipped. The residents were mostly students from iupui and people like him, people who’d missed the last train to the American Dream and needed a cheap place to loiter while time and gravity made death attractive.

Climbing the front steps, he weaved around three women who’d turned the stoop into their turf. Thelma, Rita, and Doris. Wrinkled west side mamas in loose, faded house dresses guzzling beer and chain-smoking Virginia Slims. He tried to wind by without interrupting their gossip. No luck, though. Thelma cackled and coughed as soon as she saw him.

Mr. Saturday Night, she said. All dressed up, for, what? You ever even try to get laid?

The other two broke out in gargled, emphysema-laced laughter.

Doris, the lightweight of the group, meaning, she had yet to break the two-hundred pound barrier, said, All that young pussy inside and you can’t trick one of them into your rat’s nest?

More chuckling. Reminded him of the green witch in Bugs Bunny cartoons.

Rita rounded out their chorus with, Who in the world would spread her legs for this loser?

Thanks so much. He bulled past them and punched his code into the keypad by the entrance. He checked his mailbox. Nothing but advertisements for restaurants and cleaning services he couldn’t afford. He put them in an overflowing trash can by the stairs. When he got to his floor, one of his neighbors, Marilyn, stood outside her door, staring at it. She’d never hassled him like the Broom Hildas outside. Story he’d heard about her, she’d been swimming in a cocktail of Prozac and Xanax for thirty years. She moved like a zombie from Night of the Living Dead and often got lost on the way to the laundry room in the basement. Lester said, Good evening, as he passed her.

Hello, she said. More like a question. Probably didn’t recognize him.

He started to unlock his own door, then stopped. You okay?

She shook her head. I’ve forgotten how to get into my apartment.

You have your key? He walked over to her.

Reaching into the pocket of her night robe, she said, Yes, right here. She pulled out a single key tied to a string she probably should have worn around her neck.

They stood there for another moment. Lester said, Go ahead.

What?

He took the key from her and put it into the lock and turned it.

Oh. She slapped herself in the forehead. I forgot that part.

I guess so. He opened the door and gave her the key. Let me know if you need anything else, Marilyn.

When he got inside his own place, he stripped his good jeans and collared shirt and found some torn, ratty house clothes amidst a pile on the floor. Spent twenty minutes on the shitter waiting for something to happen. After giving up on that, he grabbed a box of Lucky Charms, a bowl, a dying jug of milk, and plopped into his recliner to watch tv. Milk dribbled down his faded, 1999 Colts afc East Champions T-shirt as a rerun of Futurama followed a rerun of King of the Hill. Bobby Hill suggested to his father that he didn’t enjoy life because he was constantly afraid something would go wrong if he did. Just about made Lester cry.

Outside his apartment, someone stumbled in the hallway. High heels clacked on the tile. He hoped it might be Chelsea Farmer, a college girl who lived two doors down. Always wore light, short skirts that bounced when she walked. The women on the front steps loved ragging on her. Called her the town sperm bank. Seen her bring four guys home last Wednesday, Doris had once said. Even I never did four in the same night. She hacked up part of her lung, spit yellow goop to the side, and said, And in my day, I was the biggest whore from Gary to Cleveland!

Meant nothing to Lester. He’d wanted to make love to Chelsea Farmer since she’d moved in. She never left her apartment without being fully made up and smelling like a perfume factory. He was old enough to understand it was an illusion and he didn’t care one bit. Every time he passed her door, he blew it a kiss. When he saw her in the lobby, he said hello. Her dark hair shot in wild, frayed strands like cartoon jolts of electricity. She’d smile politely, never giving her thoughts away. She had to be at least fifteen years younger than him. He made no mystery to her how he felt. Nothing to lose, far as he was concerned.

The ruckus in the hall continued. Enough of a racket to compel him to put his cereal on the wicker table next to his chair. Without turning on the lights, he navigated the small mountain range of dirty clothes on the floor and squinted through the peephole. Took his eyes a moment to adjust. A reminder that he probably needed to get them checked.

In the hallway, Chelsea Farmer pinballed between her apartment and, it seemed, Lester’s. Back and forth, staggering worse than Marilyn. She wore an olive-colored, low-cut top and skin-tight yoga pants. Or were they leggings? Anytime a young woman wearing them got into his cab, he asked what they were called. Different women gave him different answers.

Chelsea crashed into her door, unlocked it, opened it, and disappeared inside.

Lester said, Of course. Why the hell would such a specimen ever consider giving him the time of day? He decided to call a girl who worked under the name Honey. She charged seventy-five for outcall service. As he rummaged through empty bags of Church’s and McDonald’s on his dresser, he found his cell phone, a pay-as-you-go flip-model young people referred to as an antique. Before he could open it and dial, three taps landed on his door.

No way, he said. It’s only God, playing a joke. Just a minute. How long had it been since he’d made love to a woman who didn’t keep one eye on the clock and the other on his wallet? Social formulas danced in his head. Could he bring himself to take advantage of her? Every night he dreamed of staring into her big, brown eyes, close enough to share breath. How long had he yearned to run his fingers through her wavy black hair?

They’d spoken twice. Once on the front stoop, where she explained she went to iupui. She wanted to be a teacher. Raised in Delphi, Indiana. Like most girls her age, she was infected with armchair neo-liberalism. Convinced she could save the world, one public school at a time. She’d talked about mystical crap that made no sense. She’d said, Last night I dreamt about digging a hole to bury bananas near the art museum. You know what that means. He said he had no idea. She’d rolled her gorgeous eyes through a jungle of painted eyelashes and moved on.

Another afternoon, just as Lester had woken up and stepped out to start his work day, she asked him to help her park her neon green VW bug. She sat in the passenger seat, pretended to be more interested in some paperwork on her lap. Trying not to look too excited, Lester said, Line the front of your car with the side mirror of the car you’re trying to sneak in behind. Then he demonstrated. From there, it should take you two hard turns of the wheel. He slid the Bug in between a Town Car and a Renault Encore. She thanked him as they got out of the VW and then she headed into the building. The women on the front step pointed at him and folded over in hysterics. He didn’t care. For the next three days, gravity didn’t exist. That’s when he began fantasizing the girl would someday, magically, show up at his apartment.

And now, here she was.

Must be fate.

On the other side of his door, Chelsea Farmer stood, her ear against it, listening. She’d sprinkled glitter all over her face. Wore enough blue eye shadow to paint one of those depressing Van Gogh pictures of stars. Were such a woman to climb into Lester’s cab on a Saturday night, he’d dismiss her as just another young person dolled up for alcohol and a one-night stand. But his gonads assured him this girl was different. He took a moment to straighten his shirt. His paunch hung over his waist like the crest of a wave. Should’ve started that diet. Maybe the girl had a Marlon Brando fetish. She’d grown up in the time of Family Guy and King of Queens, when fat slobs landed hot, skinny wives. Sure, sure. Maybe Hollywood had done him a favor. He took a deep breath and opened the door. Hello? he said, acting as though she were the last person he’d expected to see.

The girl stared at her feet. Reeked of booze and perfume. The same citric scent women in strip clubs wore to attract cash. Hey. Her voice sounded like it had been delivered across time and space, from somewhere under water.

Hey, said Lester.

Am I bugging you?