PUNKIN

                   BB and the Malibu Chevelle

         B. B.'s hair was short and black, like an oil smudge on his white, waxy head.
         His nose was a wedge of pimpled flesh that tapered to the narrow space between his eyes.
         And his mouth puffed out, beak-like.
         "Howdy," he said, head yo-yoing up-and-down in greeting.
         "Linda ain't got no boyfriend tonight, B. B. Yuk know sumeone fur her?"
         "Hey, just junk it, man. I don't need no help," Linda said, spat out the window, "There's that beautiful
           Fred Johnson now. I can fuck him any time, if I wanted to."
          And Fred Johnson walked by - Womba's eyes glazed - blond hair wafting him through the night,
          moving gracefully.
          B. B., laughing, stepped on the gas.
          The Malibu Chevelle grunted, the front end peaked up, for a moment it squatted on its rear tires,
          then lurched forward, leaving people at the bus stop coughing off eddies of dust and carbon.
          Linda wiggled her legs out the window, screaming "Beaver! Beaver! Beaver!"
          And Fred Johnson pivoted on the ball of his right foot to look.
          "Lets git sum booze, B.B.," Womba said.
          He nodded enthusiastically.

          In a few blocks he turned into the parking area of the Korner Liquor Store.
          He pushed himself up from under the steering wheel and shut the door with both hands.
          Then he started for the store blazing with fluorescent light.
          His walk was a pitching, swaying movement.
          "Hey," Womba called him, "Yuh beter nut goh der inside wit yuh hands in yuh puckets ike dat.
            Da min mite tink yuh ah holdup min - and git me mo buble gum."
          Linda tucked her legs back inside, then twisted around to peer through the broken rear glass.
          The hole sucked in the car' s fumes, so she blew air up her nose.
          She watched the traffic on the street.
          The cars purred past, smooth, complete, shiny.
          Chrome dabbed their bodies with silver arrows.
          And inside, behind rolled up windows, their passengers seem wrapped in a deep, unwrinkled
          cellophane, snug and far distant from the garnish, distorted reflections which cavorted over their
          hard cocoons.
          Linda rested her chin on the back of her hand, picking her fingernails.

          She was staring, when B.B. dumped the brown paper bag into the back seat.
          Life Beer in 6-pack bounced out and wedged into a wide gash that exposed the springs.
          Womba reached over, and ripped the carton apart.
          B.B. shifted into reverse.
          She held a can, she pulled the aluminum tab -- when the car lurched back toward a pink Lincoln
          just come into the parking lot.
          B.B. screeched to a stop, shifted gears, while Womba's beer gushed over the dashboard, and he
          frantically spun the wheel and careened out the lot.
          Linda looked back.
          Holding a pink door ajar, the fat black man bellowed at them.
          Beside him there was a woman almost invisible except for her blond wig's glimmer and the dangling
          sparkle of earrings.
          Then they were gone.

          B.B., hunched over the steering wheel, sped through a red light.
          A silver spray of beer arched above the car.
          They laughed.
          Womba, her mouth bubbled with foam, looked like a mad dog.
          "Let' s change clothes, man!" Linda said.
          "Sure, nuf. Go tuyur A-partment,. B.B. dear," Womba cooed.
          He turned the corner.
          It was in a wooden tenement whose walls were raw with exposed timber.
          The paint nicked, and faded by rain.
          A bus stop in front.
          Across the street steel grids protected the glass front of a bar.
          It's cracked door had on it scrawled in red paint across a plank,
          "Please Come In. Your Welcome".
          And one black woman in a heavy Army raincoat was dancing on the sidewalk, shuffling in purple
          sneakers.
          She waved a bottle of sparkling wine at the cars going by.
          She talked to the dusty windows.
          B.B. parked in an alley.
          She waved the bottle at him, chewing her sunken lips in greeting.
          "B.B., all my things better still be there," Linda said.
          Feeling mischievous, she aimed a beer can at Womba's buttocks and jerked the tab off, showering her.
          "God damn!" Womba shouted, "Fuck!."
          She chased her into the tenement, up flights of stairs, their steps thudding on the musty carpets,
          down the dark peeling corridor to the door of B.B.'s room.
          There Linda wheeled round ready to fight, fists raised.
          But Womba took vengeance. Running with an open beer can, shaking it with thumb over the hole,
          she released it on Linda's face just turned, scowled in warning.
          Liquid jets, shrouded in a brilliant drizzle, whipped across her cheeks, soaking her eye lashes,
          and seeped into her mouth.
          She was sputtering, wiping her eyes, when B.B. pushed her away from the door.
          He picked the lock.
          "Whars yur key?" Womba asked.
          "I don't know, man," B.B. said, opening it.


                   the Apartment

          A fetid odor of dried soup rolled out into the corridor like a moldy, furry animal.
          It embraced them, curling around, rubbing against her nostrils.
          A dull, sedentary reek.
          B.B. dropped the brown paper bag from the car on the naked mattress on the floor.
          There were two wooden chairs.
          A green suitcase pushed into a corner.
          Three cardboard boxes, two with clothes, one was filled  with   trash:
          newspapers, opened cans of Campbell soup,
          two or three red bricks,
          decaying food.
          A banana peel was draped over the side, black and jeweled with white hairy fungus.
          One small table.
          A full-length mirror was propped against the wall.
          B.B. went into the bathroom.
          He flushed the toilet, pulled down his pants, and sat down.
          He heard his drops into the water and his urine hissing, steaming down.
          He groaned in profound satisfaction.
          Then he thought about things and studied the grimy walls.
          The grayish solidified froth around the faucet on the sink.
          Such strange quiet shapes.
          He wiped himself with the newspaper rolled up behind the toilet.
          He flushed the toilet again and pulled up his pants.

          The girls had already changed.
          Liking what he saw, his head bounced up-and-down, slow, excited nods.
          Womba and Linda stood around the mattress.
          Womba had teased her hair back from her head and, with her wide DayGlow streaked eyes,
          looked as if she had stared down the face of God in a wind tunnel.
          She was in tight leather.
          A vest vainly fought her breasts.
          Star studs trimmed a broad belt around her waist.
          Short shorts, snug as a membrane, exposed thick slices of her buttocks.
          And knee-high platform boots pushed out her thighs, cantilevered her bottom, sending her hips
          bump-and-grinding with every step she took.
          "Wow," B.B. said.
          Linda was good too.
          He grinned.
          Then, with hands on his belt, he moved toward Womba.
          "Yuh wash your hands?" She asked, disdainfully.
          "Heh, heh, heh," he answered.

          Lighting a cigarette, Linda moved away and twisted open a pint of Jay Vee Bourbon.
          Womba stood on the mattress, pinching her nostrils shut; pivoting awkwardly on her heels,
          she followed B.B.'s spiraling, closer and closer, prowling toward her with low, bowlegged strides.
          "Sex, sex, sex," he chirped, like a bird of prey appraising a warm rump of meat.
          Womba waited.
          And Linda, watching casually, leaned on the wall, inhaling smoke through mouthfuls of whiskey.
          She admired herself in the mirror.
          It's surface was warped, so her image distorted her and was undulating wildly.
          She raised an arm, and it split into two from her elbow, one was just a fat stump, the other hand
          had two fingers like claws; her left eye bulged out with her cheek.
          She giggled.
          B.B. grabbed Womba.
          Linda assumed a dozen poses, while he squeezed Womba's body, flicked his thin tongue
          into her waxy ears, mashed her buttocks against his groin.
          Between explosive giggles Womba tried hard to hold onto her aloof expression.
          She was fantasizing she was beautiful, and beauty acted aloof like that.
          Finally, under B.B.'s confused pushing, she was down on her knees, and his crotch gleamed
          white through his open zippers.
          Linda thrust her breasts tight against her black, lazy chemise -
          in the mirror she was a tiny head and two big black balls with white spindly arms.
          She was bored.
          Womba made choking sounds.
          "Hey, you guys, I'm goin'! Meet you suckers at the boogie palace. Bye!"
          Picking up her shag coat, she went to the door and looked back.
          Womba flapped her arms on the mattress trying to fly.
          She ran out.
          "Lousy porn . . " she sighed.


                   the Bus Stop

          The street was dark and except for the woman shuffling in the Army raincoat, it was empty.
          Linda waited at a bus stop.
          But when she saw bright headlights speeding toward her, she stuck out her thumb.
          The red Cadillac pitched to a stop, then accelerated backwards about 20 feet.
          She stepped off the curve.
          "C'mon, girl! We take you where you goin'!" A black face said.
          The large head was bald and its brows hung over marshmallow-white eyes,
          where two charred dots stared at her.
          Other eyeballs, duskier, struggled for a position in the back.
          "Where you going?" Linda asked, gripping her coat close.
          The door flipped open and the man lurched out.
          Tall, he had a bulging body weirdly puffed and segmented with muscles.
          He looked like an insect.
          "Where evah you wanna go, Baeebee," he grinned, bending over, pulling down
          the creases on his pants.
          Linda wavered.
          She minced ahead and went back a step, on spike heels, a razor-thin strap around her ankles.
          The front seat pivoted forward.
          There was movement in the dark back.
          Excited eyes made room for her.
          "Well . . nawh," she hesitated.
          "Go on! Git her, Sonny! befuh . . .!" A black hand jabbed the man outside.
          "uuuuuuuhhH!" LInda sprinted to B.B.'s building.
          Sonny rushed after her, looking about him.
          Then he stopped and jumped back into the car.
          "Go git her, man! What you doin', niggah? damn!"
          The Cadillac sped off.
          "What you goin' fuh?" the voice pleaded.
          "That crazy womin 'cross the street was writin' down our license number, man!" Sonny said,
          twisting a forefinger against his temple.
          "Crazy!"
          Linda watched the taillights disappear.
          Wiggling under her coat, she sneered,
          "Fuckin' soft rocks!"


                   the Bus

          Thirty minutes later she jumped into the bus.
          By then the black woman was doing a purple-shoed tango along the edge of the curb,
          and each time she turned around, she waved a piece of paper.
          Linda dropped her coin in the farebox, vaguely observing that the bus was not empty,
          and sat near the front.
          The garish lighting hurt her eyes, so she turned, squinting, to the window beside her which was
          comfortably dark, smudged with human oils. Fingerprints. The grease of someone's cheek.
          Outside there was nothing but the occasional, fast blister of headlights and the flicker of the
          passing street lamps.
          The glass also reflected what was inside:
          the silent figures, the secretive faces, the metal tubes coming over vibrating seats.
          Linda shut her eyes for moment.
          When she opened them again, she saw the man on the side seat in front of her.
          Suddenly he jabbed the air, began mumbling, and his head was shaking in a tremor.
          He jabbed and jabbed again.
          Then she realized, with no especial concern, that he had hunting knife.
          Just then he stopped, and glanced at her and down to his knife, with a handle of smooth,
          veined bone.
          He fondled it, held it gently, as if it were the hand of someone he loved.
          Suddenly he slashed up the knife, violently cutting an unseen enemy to ribbons.
          He grunted explosively, wetting his lips, making it glisten.
          Linda decided to fix her nails.




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