seemingly all his life he worked with characters 

(I gotta be me I gotta be me  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH-pk2vZG2M)

Man were they ever

                     the newspaper overseer of the delivery boys he worked for was convicted of statutory rape he confessed to be a paedophile he was also convicted of other chargesanything the law could pile on him that would somehow make his newspaper superiors themselves the cops men in particular feel better about his twenty-plus years of employmenthis unfettered movement throughout the community  and the diddling  just when he thought the Church had cornered the market

he was a teenager when he hit him up for beer and liquor because he could but he was always able to dance outside his arms length and took off before things got warm Comon, stay awhile longer. No Gotta go it taught him that thats what its like to be a woman all the fucking time curioushuh that the overseers crime was his education  it taught him more than his parents triedhis teachers tried to teach him  Life could be a fucking sensational educator if your head didnt get turned too far around

he had a boss as a teenager who he roofed six years for that was an adamant John Bircher  Bill  a wiry spindly guy with rheumy pale blue eyes  he taught him about leverage  he learned you could randomly shoot a man in the facekill him  and unless you were eyeballed in the act likely youd get away with it because there was nothing to tie you to the dead mannot what the cops called reasonable suspicionor was it probable cause  no matter   cause and effect

Bill asked  Who randomly shoots people in the face?

Sounds like maybe you have

Maybe. Maybe not. Sometimes you gotta do what ya gotta do to get to tomorrow. Ya’ve never had to make ends meet, it wasn’t easy in those days, ya did what ya had to do. Dog eat dog. Dem or ya. Was no brainer.

when Bill heard the house he lived during the Twenties and Thirties was being razed they hotfooted it over early one evening ignored the No Trespassing signs slipped the flimsy warning tapes strung around it like garland aside and went in  it was off North Halsted  A dago neighborhood then, he said, me and mine, we stuck out like a sore thumbs, however we was known as trustworthy people. That's how the mob underlings heard of us. They asked if we could use work. Ah, what the hell. At its heart the mob’s a business, savvy sons of bitches, not stupid. I wasn’t stupid. And I was loyal.

inside the dilapidated house Bill triggered a hidden wire that opened a secreted panel under the front stairs revealing a small room  This is where my mother and me made gin. I ran it up to Wisconsin, beat ass back, and turned over the proceeds, like that, proceeds, lot of lettuce, to the muscle that fronted us. They gave us a respectable return, not a lot, not for the risk, but a helluva lot more than most in the neighborhood were making. Crime pays, boy. Don’t believe any bastard who'll tell you otherwise.

Leverage, Bill said, it’s all about leverage.

he cut the lawn edged the sidewalks raked the leaves shoveled the snow for an eccentric world-renown artist painter who spent days in a studio he built for himself at the back of the lot he owned beside his house

his wife prepared him meals and left them outside the door rapped once on it and left  like room service

getting on his knees so that he was looking him straight in the eyes he told him Never respect anyone who doesn’t respect you, respecting your elders is a load of crap, it’s a two-way street. Remembered that.

he did

in Miami he tied up with a gal who worked for a dealer and helped her move grass and hashishGawddamn he loved hashish she was sweet on him she thought sharing the inside track with him would get him into the sack he didnt want any commitments  So if you won’t fuck me, can I go down on you? momma didnt raise no fool

when the cops started sniffing aroundevery good thing comes to an end know that he got the cut-rate buy on hash that hed been setting up for nearly a year and left the profitable business with a quarterpound thatd be 113.398 grams a whole lotta hash he made damn sure it was exactbusted it out on the scale he used at the university borrowed it from the chemistry lab

Moroccan hash he tweaked the buyerspecifically through the grapevine wha the fuck was that she couldnt help herself she told him the cat dug Burroughs he laid word on him from afar that Bill also toked Moroccan in TangierDuh though frankly it also made him feel closer to the freak who wrote Junky Naked Lunch an on an on something he knew emphatically that he shared with the cat he never saw but the cat never saw him either mutually anonymous

so like Junky Naked Lunch an on an on characters woven their way through his life BING! BING! BING! BING! latest catch was Alexis a real free-spirit pincushion for a face tatted sleeves  elsewhere he was confident nipple barbells on display through her selection of thin tshirts wha the fuck was that

Alexis was having an offday he was told or she was stoned which didnt bother him they were coworkers at a liquorstore that provided for functioning alcoholics she broke a bottle of Maraschino cherries her third that day he was told so he motioned her off the floorRun the cash register hed clean up the mess not that eight ounces of cherries was a mess

later when she approached himthanking him for cleaning up after her he laughed  You shouldnt thank me

I shouldn’t thank you?

No Im afraid I hung you out to dry

Hung me out to dry?

I did

How did you hang me out to dry? doesn’t make sense.

I told them in back when they asked what I was doing with the bucket and mop that I was helping you

You did help me.

I told them that you broke a cherry on the floor in the middle of the store Youre my new hero

NO!

Yes Now try an live that down Alexis Yous now a.k.a. Bustacherry

Thursday evening,  10  5. 18

1303,  Thursday,  17  5. 18

Marvin Gaye  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPCWRlHgztM