Bait: A Novel by J. Kent Messum Page A

his feet still didn’t have a single bill in it. Tallahassee Jones looked up and down the boardwalk again. There were people about, not as many as he’d hoped, but enough to warrant an evening of musical offerings, in his opinion. The cap suggested otherwise.
    “C’mon, people, pay a little and I’ll play a lot.”
    Tal mopped his brow with a bandana. The sun was too hot, despite the lateness of the day. The sky was almost cloudless. Not a single breeze from the ocean. He’d spent the better part of the week strumming his mangy acoustic on the boardwalk and asking folks for spare change in the sweltering heat. Change was all that was being tossed his way, sparse and of the nickel and dime variety. Between songs he swigged from a paper bag containing tall boys of Budweiser. The beer being sucked through his lips was warm and sour, but he didn’t care. He got the numbing he needed out of it.
    “Christ, folks, throw a dog a bone,” he grumbled.
    Tal drained his second tall boy of the evening, letting a thimbleful of foamy amber trickle from the corner of his mouth. He let out a loud belch and crushed the can inside the bag, much to the distaste of an old white woman walking her Yorkshire terrier nearby.
    “Disgusting,” she said.
    “Take your bitch elsewhere, bitch,” he muttered.
    But she was already walking away, pulling her yappy dog along by the neck. The beer buzz chased away his inhibitions and Tal decided to let loose. He tuned his D string, cleared his throat, and broke into a fervent version of Bob Marley’s “Waiting in Vain,” guitar strumming solid, voice a smoky tenor. He performed with eyes shut, opening them only to thank a passerby when he heard the clink of coins hitting coins in the hat. Whenever Tal played “Waiting in Vain” these days, he didn’t think of an elusive love. In fact, a woman was the last thing to come to mind. Now he only equated the lyrics with heroin.
    “It’s been three years since I’m knockin’ on your door . . .”
    Three years since heroin completely took over Tal’s life. Before that he’d claimed recreational use for a long time, a baby habit, if such a thing could ever be said of junk.
Recreational
was an almost impossible adjective for the opiate that could never be kept at arm’s length, and about as laughable as the term
high-functioning addict.
With heroin you were only delaying the inevitable. Baby habits were quick to turn into belly habits, wringing your guts in an iron grip if you failed to feed them on time.
    “Tears in my eyes burn, tears in my eyes burn . . .”
    Tal had cried for heroin. He’d begged for it, crawled for it, fought for it, stole for it, and once almost killed for it.
    “Sounds awesome, dude,” said a kid passing by on a skateboard.
    Tal nodded appreciatively, but the kid donated nothing. Busking outside the marina was usually lucrative, more profitable than mere panhandling. People with the money and the means liked to see the less fortunate work for a handout. They wanted entertainment for their dollar, whether it be singing on a sidewalk or dancing on a bed of hot coals. Those who moored their boats at the marina all had serious dough. Some of them recognized Tal and tossed him a little extra, though it still made him feel like a minstrel most days. Once in a while some specimens of white wealth would walk by and regard him as such, a sneer on their lips or a chuckle in their throat. Tal had half a mind to bash their heads in with his guitar. Give him enough tall boys in one afternoon and he just might.
    Tal looked at the expensive yachts on the water, wishing he had the kind of bank account that paid for them. He took in their names:
Odyssey Two
,
North Star
,
Esmeralda
,
Pelican Briefs
,
The Naughty Nemo.
Some were sailing toward the Florida Keys, toward the place Tal dreamed of escaping on a pricey pleasure craft with a few hot bitches at his disposal and a mountain of coke in the cabin. He knew more about the Keys