Lethe Bashar’s Novel of Life

Lethe followed Sonny down a dark, narrow hallway.  They stretched their legs over the heap of limbs and the crack-heads moaned in anguish.

 

Lethe and Sonny stood before a door at the end of a hall.  The door had a window slot which was covered by a block of wood.  The most humongous black man Lethe had ever seen opened the door.  Sonny called him “Cyclops”.  Lethe knew a little about mythology from school, and recalled the story of the Cyclops who guarded the mouth of a cave in the Peloponnesian Islands.  Odysseus and his men were trapped inside the cave for two nights, and the only way they were able to escape was by driving a wooden stake into the eye of the monster.  Recalling the story, Lethe wondered how he would escape Mammon’s house.  The black man’s enormous body obstructed the doorway. 

 

The body guard had such thick rolls around his neck that it looked like he was carrying a python on his shoulders.  His colossal arms crossed in front of his chest.  And then he tentatively stepped to the side so Lethe and Sonny could enter.  A goat skin lay at the foot of the doorway like a sacrificial rug.  Lethe walked onto it and whiped the bottoms of his shoes.  The guard grimaced; Sonny stood next to the wall. 

 

With bated breath, Lethe walked toward the man at the back of the room.  Mammon sat at a mahogany admiral’s desk.  Partially covered in shadow, his pockmarked skin was the color of dirty, bespeckled water.  On top of his desk were model ships encrusted with diamonds.

 

As Lethe walked closer he could see this man was not pretty.  A long, leopard-spotted robe fell off his shoulders, revealing grisly chest hairs and the blurred ink of worn tattoos.  With a creepy grin Mammon invited Lethe to sit down.  The couch had unsightly tears in it and cigarette burns.  Now Lethe’s pulse jumped and his eyes were begging Sonny to intervene.  But Sonny couldn’t help Lethe anymore; he wasn’t in charge.  He shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, “I don’t even know you.”

 

          “Sonny say you got an offer.  ‘Dat true?” 

 

          “An offer?  Um, not really.” 

 

          “What you mean, ‘not really’?”

 

          Sonny slid toward the door.

 

          “You—stay here—” Mammon said.

 

          Cyclops laid his hand on Sonny’s shoulder.

 

          “Sonny says you got Two Grand.  ‘Dat true?  Or are you just coming in here to tell me stories?”

 

          Lethe looked down at his hands.  His heart was beating like a tom tom.  This is where the epic story of his life becomes the short record of his death.  Why’d he lie to Sonny in the first place? 

 

          Sonny shriveled up like a fried sweet potato under the gaze of Mammon.  Cyclops kept his hand on Sonny’s shoulder and applied constant pressure to the neck.

 

          “I’ve never done this before—”  Lethe said, hoping to gain some last minute sympathy.  “I just wanted Sonny to bring me to the . . .”

 

“To the what?”  Mammon snapped.

 

“To the . . .”

 

“Spit it out white boy!  To the what?”

 

“To the right one, to the right one,” Lethe uttered.

 

“Ho-ho-ho and a bottle of rum,” Mammon burst out.  “You found the right one alright.  I run this sleazy operation, along with twelve others.  You found the right one right here at Mammon’s House of Horrors.”  He opened his mouth wide enough for Lethe to see into the back of his throat.  It was a dark tunnel of sixteen gold teeth sparkling along the sides.

 

“Forgive me for intruding,” Lethe pleaded.

         

“You’re not intruding, G.  I welcome you into my humble crack house.  What’s your name?”

 

          “Lethe.  Lethe Bashar.”

 

          “Lethe Bashar . . . who the fuck do you think you are coming into a place like this?”

 

          “I lost my way.  I promise you won’t ever see me again.”

 

          “Get out!!”  Mammon screamed at Sonny.  Cyclops released him.  The door slammed shut.

 

          “Not everyone in this town gets to see my pretty face.  You happen to be one of the lucky ones . . .”  A spasm of mirth erupted from Mammon’s dry, phlegmy throat.

         

Lethe glanced at the model ships on the admiral’s desk.  He was too afraid to speak now. 

 

          “If you got any money put it on the table right now.”

 

          Lethe removed two twenty dollar bills from his breast pocket.

 

          Mammon turned to his body guard.  “Get some dope out of the front drawer.”

 

          “Take this dope back to wherever you came from and share it with all your friends.  But if you decide to come back, you better bring some bigger bills.  Got ‘dat?  I don’t have time for these charades.  I’m dealing crack to half of Vegas.”

 

          “Thank you, sir.  Thank you.  I appreciate your troubles.”

 

          With his pinky finger, Mammon picked some food out of the corner of his mouth and said, “Now leave.”