Clean Whistles

A Midnight Vault II Story

Kim is a spoon. Jimmy Tooth always used to talk to her when he was cooking, telling her she’s a curvy gal with a nice waist. Told her she’s hot, laughing while his lighter licked her shiny bottom. Jimmy Tooth still talks to Kim, but he don’t cook with her no more. Jimmy Tooth been homeless for longer than he can remember, and been clean at least two weeks, which he can remember too good. Jimmy Tooth OD’d in the sticky bathroom of a Dunkin’ and they had to narc him three times till he came back. Felt like they’d used a lighting rod on his dome and a can of mace up his nose. First thing he remembers seeing was the little man on the Men’s restroom sign with a ‘D’ head. Jimmy Tooth been clean since then, but things haven’t been much better.

Kim’s the only person Jimmy Tooth talks to. He used to cook black tar with Kim, two weeks ago he used to. Used a bright green lighter too. He been clean since Dunkin’, though not for lack of trying. More so because Jimmy Tooth is sporting lint. No funds, has Jimmy Tooth. So he don’t cook black tar no more. Now, what Kim does, she keeps him on the straight and narrow, even when the itch gets real bad. When it does get bad, the itch, he looks deep into Kim’s concave face and he sees his very own self. Jimmy Tooth. The outline of his head and shoulders show up the wrong way round, twisted funhouse-like. That’s why Jimmy Tooth likes Kim. She sees him. It may not be a great picture, what with Kim being covered in heat marks and rainbows, but she always has a different perspective, Kim does. Makes Jimmy Tooth feel like he can do anything, seeing the world upside down like that.

Two weeks now, Jimmy Tooth been clean, two weeks and he feels he could go on forever, or least for a while, another day maybe. Sometimes when he sees his own self in Kim, he doesn’t like what he sees, not at all. Those days, the itch gets real bad, but Jimmy Tooth no tengo dinero. So he can’t cook and Kim stays cool and another day squeaks by, clean as a whistle. Mostly, it’s nights Jimmy Tooth is awake, mostly. Used to be he’d always be awake days on end, he’d be up an about, seeing shit that wasn’t there, but that was more than two weeks ago, when Jimmy Tooth had more gas in the tank, more pep in his step. There’s nothing in him these days and these days he’s the one ain’t being seen. It’s getting so that he likes the feeling of clean nights and a long sleep, but now it’s getting harder to hold onto them. Clean nights are slippery fish. Some days Jimmy Tooth thinks he’s maybe losing those precious marbles, might be a few eggs short of a dozen.

Today when Jimmy Tooth woke, he seen a pothole at the end of his alley where the busy people buzz on by. A big one, two maybe three feet across. Sizeable. Filled with rain. Jimmy Tooth didn’t know if it was really there or if maybe he was seeing things again like how he seen things two weeks ago on the sauce. But that hole wasn’t there before he fell asleep. Might be Jimmy’s losing it, who’s to say. He looks at Kim and there he is, his very own self. He seen that and looked back at the hole, squeezing Kim real tight. No, Jimmy Tooth’s still got his hands in a good grip on what’s what, and that pothole ain’t it. Looking at it makes him feel funny, like how Kim does, but ‘stead of seeing his very own self, he’s seeing something dark. Something bad. Like the shadow men that chased him two weeks back, when he hid in the Dunkln’ bathroom.

Jimmy Tooth isn’t going to let a hole scare him off his spot. He’s got it good here, he likes this alley. Enviable, is what it is. The Italian restaurant gives him food sometimes, and the laundromat on the side makes a nice warm spot where the pipes wheeze. He moves slow to his spot by the red dumpster, keeping his good eye glued on the hole, watching. His lazy eye goes all over, no good for watching holes. Good for scaring folks off though. Jimmy Tooth don’t trust that hole, not a bit. He gets in his spot under the soggy cardboard roof, smells lint and hot cotton, feels the warm wet breath, and he’s out like a light, into thick dreams of clean whistles and dirty spoons.

He wakes to a big rat chewing his garlic bread. It looks at him and runs off with his dinner. Maybe it can’t see too good with the bread in its teeth or maybe its dumb, but it runs right into the pothole and vanishes. Gone, like the sleeves on a vest. No splash, no squeak, no nothing. Jimmy Tooth palms his eyes till he’s seeing constellations, then looks again. No rat, no garlic bread. He looks out the alley but nobody seen what happened. Could be Jimmy Tooth’s off his rocker, been a long time since he was clean, but he don’t remember holes like this, not ever. Hopefully the Italian restaurant’s got something for him today, otherwise no comida para Jimmy Tooth.

The shelter down on Second has food, but Jimmy Tooth don’t do shelters, not since he was there and somebody nicked all his shit. His good backpack with the tarp and clothes and socks and Vaseline, gone. All he’s got now is Kim and the good spot here in the alley. If he went to the shelter, he’d lose his spot too, and this spot keeps him alive and thawed in the cold months. Jimmy Tooth been homeless longer than he can remember, he knows how it is. The wind come screaming angry down those city streets and cuts to the bone. Not a warm place to speak of. Subway grates are the first to go, folk setting up right over them, then the spots where buildings breathe get taken. Jimmy Tooth don’t do shelters, he’ll stay right here.

Used to be people took pity on Jimmy Tooth, threw some coin his way when the cold came. Before, when he looked nicer, people met his eyes sometimes. Not now, not since he was jumped and had his head bashed against the curb by the guy that smelled like piss. Jimmy Tooth’s eye got lazy after that and he started remembering less. He figures if he is losing marbles, that’s when it started. He looks at Kim. He looks at the hole. Jimmy Tooth shuffles over to the mouth of the alley, smooth and steady-like he does, a tight grip on Kim’s slim waist. He looks down into the hole, but he can’t see nothing, not a thing. It eats up all the light.

Jimmy Tooth picks up a red and white bread boat from off the ground. He slides it over with his toe till it tips into the black puddle.

And then it’s gone.

It slips in without a sound, disappears totally. He gets real close, Jimmy Tooth does, looks hard for the little white boat. It’s not there, ain’t nothing there. Except Jimmy Tooth sees his very own self reflecting back, but not like Kim sees him. Not quite his very own self. The Jimmy in the hole has got no lazy eye and no burns in his coat. He looks clean. Jimmy Tooth backs away, uneasy, hunkering down in his spot. Might be that he’s crazy, but he doesn’t think so. Something strange about that hole.

It starts to rain after Jimmy Tooth makes it back to his spot. Smells like wet dog and bad milk. He pulls a stained lapel to his nose at the same time a hand reaches out of the hole. The hand grabs at the ground, then Jimmy Tooth watches a man come crawling up out of the hole. Rain collects on the tip of Jimmy Tooth’s nose. It tickles and drips. He looks out of the alley but nobody’s paying attention. Nobody sees. The man from the hole stands up and Jimmy Tooth sees it’s himself, the clean Jimmy. The clean Jimmy walks over, stands in front of Jimmy Tooth and looks down at him from way up high. Jimmy Tooth looks up quiet at the clean Jimmy. He’s got the same old clothes, but no rat bites or cigarette burns. He’s got the same brown hair, but no matts or little lice crawling. He’s got Jimmy Tooth’s nose, but it’s not crooked from being punched in by that asshole cop in the park. No lazy eye, no dent in the dome. The clean Jimmy is all the same, and entirely different.

He knows the Clean Jimmy is real, as real as his very own self. The Clean Jimmy holds out a gleaming hand. Smells like lemon verbena. Jimmy Tooth looks at the shiny hand, looks up at the Clean Jimmy, then back down at the hand. Smells like a urinal cake. A safety-green lighter sleeps in the soaped palm. Jimmy Tooth takes the lighter. He rests the old callus on the inside of his filthy right thumb against the striker wheel on the glowing lighter and when he looks up, the Clean Jimmy is gone. Jimmy Tooth moves to the hole, looks down in and there’s the Clean Jimmy, smiling with all those white teeth. Jimmy Tooth don’t have but one tooth. Meth mouth, they call it, from when Jimmy Tooth had a different DoC and more than lint in his pocket. He shivers, drops the lighter into the hole. It don’t make a sound or a ripple. Jimmy Tooth watches the Clean Jimmy catch it, easy, smart. Smooth like. He backs up from the hole, walks round and out to the street.

The busy people move back and forth as always, buzzing right on by Jimmy Tooth. He glances at Kim, then holds her out to each person. Nobody looks, like Jimmy Tooth ain’t even there. He looks into Kim but she’s empty, she don’t see Jimmy Tooth neither. Nobody sees Jimmy Tooth. He starts to wonder if he’s really there at all. The people keep walking, noisy and fast. Busy. Moving here and there, back and forth. Busy busy busy. Jimmy Tooth reaches out, Kim in his left and the ghost of a lighter in his right, but his hands pass clean through the person, straight on through like nothing, and the person rushes by all the same. Jimmy Tooth backs away, backs almost into the hole.

The Clean Jimmy is there, or maybe he’s always there, and stops him with an arm across Jimmy Tooth’s shoulder and an open hand in front of his nose with the bright lighter and a brand new rig, clean plastic, orange cap, filled with a clear ticket out of this alley. The Clean Jimmy tucks everything into Jimmy Tooth’s coat pocket with a soft pat, a shoulder squeeze. It slips in butter easy and settles at the bottom feather light. The whole world shrinks down to that pocket. It gets heavier real quick, steady-like, till Jimmy Tooth can’t hardly stand under the weight of it, so he sits down, collapses into his spot. Kim is in his hand, but she still doesn’t see Jimmy Tooth. He’s not there in her silver concave face and it gets real bad for him, the itch. Kim shows an empty alley and a blur of people that don’t see Jimmy Tooth, don’t feel how heavy his pocket is.

Jimmy Tooth moves to the hole. He moves without moving, gets real close, right up on the edge looking down into it. It’s dark. Impenetrable. He looks out of his alley, where the people are busy with jobs and families and hobbies and busy being busy. None of them make eye contact. Never do. Jimmy Tooth looks from the street back at his spot. He doesn’t know how to get from there to here. He isn’t sure he wants to. The alley is quiet and easy. Out there everything is buzzing. Out there nobody sees Jimmy Tooth. Nobody hears him.

Jimmy Tooth drops into the hole.

Nobody notices, nobody hears. It’s real dark in the hole, no light to speak of. No buzzing neither. He looks up at the bottom of the world, watching it keep on going without him. Nobody sees. Jimmy Tooth falls deeper into the hole, down down down, under and away from the rushing people and the busy world. He looks at Kim and it’s like he’s looking out from his alley, except everything’s the wrong way round. Kim is laying on the ground, cooling off in the rain. Her shiny bottom reflects Jimmy Tooth’s alley, everything just where it was, like he wasn’t ever there.