Baby Huey: A Cautionary Tale of Addiction Read Online Free PDF Page B

wall and turned the light off.
    In the dark I could still see that crazy look on his sweaty face, the small patch of curly hairs above his potbelly, and his package, which dispelled my belief that all fat boys were disadvantaged.
    “Man, uh, you want me to take you somewhere? Somewhere safe? Put your clothes on, okay? I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”
    He ignored all that, tiptoed to the front window, peeked out through the curtain.
    “Go get you clothes,” I whispered. “Go get your clothes and put em on. I’ll take you--”
    “You need to be quiet,” he said. Irritated.
    This quelled my fear somewhat, made me hot. This guy in my apartment tiptoeing around naked like he paid the rent, telling me to be quiet. The more I thought about it, the hotter I got. But not hot enough to tell him to get his shit and get out.
    I tried a different tack. “Mookie, who you think is out there?” Damn him, I could talk in my apartment whenever I felt like it.
    I heard him sigh. “G, if you let them know I’m in here, you and I gonna have a complication. A serious complication.”
    That was a threat if I’d ever heard one. That got me worried again. That prompted me to go into the kitchen and turn on the faucet to drown out noise opening a drawer and getting a butter knife out. I came back and sat down on the recliner, the knife tucked in the front of my pants. Mookie was still looking out the window.
    Okay, Big Boy, bring it on!
    Mookie finally moved away from the window and tiptoed into the kitchen as I gripped the knife under my shirt. I heard the shutters in the kitchen window over the sink.
    Thirty or forty minutes later he came back to the living room window.
    “Mookie,” I whispered, “I’m going back to bed.”
    He didn’t have anything to say about that. I locked the bedroom door and tried to scoot the dresser over to block it. Couldn’t budge it. After sitting on the edge of the bed for a long while, listening for whatever that fool might be doing, I fell asleep, knife in hand.
    When I woke up sunlight showed in the window. Laughter sounded from somewhere in the apartment. I knew that laugh anywhere. Doreen was back. The smell of sausage and eggs filled the apartment.
    I found Doreen, Vida, and Lewis sitting at the kitchen table, eating breakfast.
    “Where’s Mookie?”
    “Right there,” Doreen said, and he stepped into view, fully clothed now, an apron on, holding a skillet in one hand, a spatula in the other.
    That crazy look gone, he grinned at me. “G, how you like your eggs? Scrambled or over easy?”
    “Scrambled,” I said. “No, over easy.”
    “We had a helluva good time last night, didn’t we?” Mookie said. “We have to do that again, G.”
     
     

     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

    Chapter 4

    Dokes covered his face with both hands. We were sitting near the pool in front of his apartment playing dominoes, the game halted because Dokes found the story about Mookie hilarious.
    He stopped laughing to ask, “All those trips to the john you didn’t make him a crackhead?”
    “No. This guy wasn’t dirty, skinny, bad teeth, none of that.”
    “Dude, you talking Hollywood crackheads. Real-life crackheads go through a cycle--beginner, user, rock bottom.” He started laughing again. “Dude, where have you been? What did Doreen say?”
    “I didn’t tell her all I told you. I told her he started acting strange when they left, then she tells me he’s a crackhead. You know I couldn’t tell her the guy started crawling around naked, peeking out windows and threatening me in my own apartment.”
    Serious now, Dokes said, “That crack ain’t no joke. A guy I worked with, been there fifteen years, started smoking--job, wife, house, car, everything gone in a matter of weeks. Now he’s walking the streets, begging.”
    Two women wearing bikinis came through the gate and reclined in lawn chairs at the other end of the pool. Dokes didn’t give