Dope by Sara Gran Page B

tails with a turban on his head tried to talk the people passing by into seeing Professor Thaddeus’s Educated Fleas. I declined. I’d seen them before and they weren’t all that educated. A group of sailors in navy whites stood around and watched the barker, wondering over it all, and an old man in a trench coat, worn at the cuffs, was watching along with the sailors. The old man’s face hung down with age, and a few gray hairs were left under the rim of his hat. Under the trench coat he wore a suit that had been pretty sharp ten years ago, when he’d bought it, but now it was faded and shiny from being cleaned too many times. The old man kept his eyes on the barker, but slowly, one step at a time, he was moving closer to one of the sailors.
    The old man was just getting ready to relieve the sailor closest to him of his wallet when the barker spotted him. The barker opened his mouth to say something when I stepped in and took the old man by the arm. “Grandpa!” I said, loudly. “I’ve told you a thousand times, I don’t want you spending your relief check on the naked girls in the dime museum!”
    The old man was Yonah Ross, probably the oldest living junkie in New York—he wasn’t all that old but it was still a pretty big accomplishment. Part of it was due to the fact that he never sold it, like most do at one time or another, so no one ever had a beef with him. Instead he stuck to street cons, from pickpocketing and shoplifting to three-card monte, selling fake opium to tourists and leading sailors to fake hookers. He had lived with my mother for a while when I was a girl. A lot of men had lived with my mother but Yonah was different. He liked kids and he taught me a lot.
    The sailors looked at each other and decided that naked girls and educated fleas were worth a dime. They went inside. The barker took their money and then turned around to hiss at Yonah. “You’re lucky she showed up,” he said, “or I’d have the coppers here. Now beat it, and don’t come back.”
    Yonah looked glum as we walked away. “Jesus,” he said, after he thanked me for getting him out of there. “That son-of-a-bitch carney. Who’s he think he is? You know I knew his old man, and him, he never gave me a hard time. I used to steer guys to the museum and they let me have the crowds out front. We used to work together back then, everyone in the Square. The hookers would let me know who had the rolls and I’d let them know who I’d already gotten to, so we wouldn’t all be wasting our time. Now it’s every man out for himself. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out here.” He shook his head at the immorality of it all. We walked past Howard Johnson’s. Yonah had his eye on a couple of out-of-town businessmen standing in front, but I walked him past them. He smiled at me. “Jesus, Joey, you look great, just great. How you feeling these days? You doin’ good?”
    â€œGreat,” I said. “I’m doing great. But listen, Yonah, let me buy you a drink. Maybe you can help me with something.”
    â€œSure, doll, sure. But I gotta go back to my room for a bit just now. You want to come?”
    I went along with him to his room on Forty-second and Ninth. We talked about the good old days on the way there. All the fun times we had when he taught me how to grind up oregano so it looked like weed, and you could sell it to suckers for a dollar or more. Those grand old times when he sat me down and explained to me what a badger was, and introduced me to a man who would pull it off with me—I’d pretend to be a hooker and the man would pretend to be my angry father. I’d find a trick and just before we did the deed Pa would bust in, and the trick would give Pa all the cash he had on him to stop him from calling the cops. Yonah had meant well, though, and I’d probably be a lot worse off now if I had never met