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University of New Orleans ScholarWorks@UNO University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations Dissertations and Theses 5-14-2010 It Must be Karma: The Story of Vicki Joy and Johnnymoon Richard Bolner University of New Orleans Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td Recommended Citation Bolner, Richard, "It Must be Karma: The Story of Vicki Joy and Johnnymoon" (2010). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 1121. https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/1121 This Thesis is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by ScholarWorks@UNO with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Thesis in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights- holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/or on the work itself. This Thesis has been accepted for inclusion in University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UNO. For more information, please contact [email protected]. It Must be Karma: The Story of Vicki Joy and Johnnymoon A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of New Orleans in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Fine Arts in Film, Theatre and Communication Arts Creative Writing by Rick Bolner B.S. University of New Orleans, 1982 May, 2010 Table of Contents Prologue ...............................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1..............................................................................................................................7 Chapter 2............................................................................................................................33 Chapter 3............................................................................................................................52 Chapter 4............................................................................................................................99 Chapter 5..........................................................................................................................150 Chapter 6..........................................................................................................................224 Chapter 7..........................................................................................................................255 Chapter 8..........................................................................................................................308 Chapter 9..........................................................................................................................335 Chapter 10........................................................................................................................360 Chapter 11........................................................................................................................417 Vita...................................................................................................................................453 ii Prologue Then: The Incident New Orleans, July 11, 1979, 7:00pm Desi and I drive to a Time Saver convenience store. We need some coffee to fight off the sleeps. There’s one person in the place, the cashier. Desi gets the coffee. I head to the bathroom and exit from the nun getup. Getting out of the habit is a small job in itself. The disguise works great for passing phony prescriptions. We need to kill some time before we return the K&B pharmacy and pick up the phony prescription. Phonies are serious business as in a tall, dark, and ugly felony known as Fraud and Deceit. Jail time. We truck down to the end of Huey P. Long Avenue to the Mississippi River where there’s an abandoned ferry dock. Desi drives up the concrete roadway to the top of the levee. From across the river, I hear a grieving trumpet drop blue notes into the departing day. A breeze passes over the TR-4’s open roof. It soothes me like a kiss to the cheek. Desi pulls underneath this big iron ramp that’s part of the old ferry dock. We hide there. I try to calm down. Instead, I get the chills and my calves start to ache, which means I’ve entered absolute cold turkey. Cold turkey is all about withdrawal pain. It feels so humiliating. I’ve got diarrhea and want to shit on myself, but I hold it back. I am no longer human but post- human. I feel my anger with Desi creep down the skin of my back. It pinpricks its way to my skull and enters my chest. It’s like I suddenly have a bomb strapped to my heart. To diffuse it I bring up the issue of his former girlfriend. “What are you talking about?” Desi says. He suddenly turns stupid. 1 “Looks like you can’t let go of her,” I say. “Vicki, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He gets dumber. “I think you do. And it’s time you make a decision. Me or her?” “Look, I’m not in the mind to talk about that now.” “That. It’s a girl, a woman, another human being.” “Vicki, knock it the fuck off. You just need a dose.” “You’ve betrayed me,” I say. “You’re pregnant with another man’s child. Johnnymoon’s of all people. Johnny- fucking-Moon. Be sure to invite me to the baby shower, would you.” “You betrayed me.” Desi takes a big sigh. His cold turkey has made him listless. He leans his head back on the car seat. He falls asleep like he’s just been turned off or something. All the stuff described as cold turkey (withdrawal symptoms) in the PDR (Physician’s Desk Reference) happen, and you get to feel them. You get listless. That means really, I mean really, tired. To make things even spookier, during cold turkey your brain starts to have a brain of its own. Both brains play tricks on you, and you never know these things are really happening to you. It makes you do things you don’t ordinarily do. In short, you become drug crazed. Suddenly your mind is a terrible place to be. A payphone sits underneath the iron ramp. Time to get even. I put a nickel in and the dial tone blasts my eardrum. I call Detective Billy Trenton, the narc who everyone luvs to hate. He’s a one-man police force. He is the one who busted me three years earlier for Fraud and Deceit. An act my parents got me out of. All charges 2 disappeared, like magic, as though Samantha on Bewitched showed up and twitched her nose. The operator patches me through to Detective Trenton. “Trenton,” he says. I’ve got my hand over the phone. “K&B pharmacy, one-ninety-seven Westbank Expressway, nine o’clock tonight. Fraud and deceit. A phony script. Tussionex.” “What,” he says. I take my hand off the phone and throat-whisper over the receiver. I sound part May West, part psycho. I repeat the information. “Figure it out.” I hang up and return to the TR-4, which actually belongs to Johnnymoon. Desi sleeps. The smell of the Mississippi and its cool breeze feels like a gift. I turn on the radio, and Skylab is expected to crash within the next twenty-four hours. I can’t stay awake any longer much less have a sane thought. I lie back as far as I can on the car’s passenger seat. About eight-thirty p.m. my aching bones wake me. We sleep longer than planned. Nobody has disturbed us. The sky is about to squeeze the last drop of sunlight out of the day. We will not be able to ride away into the sunset, because the sky will soon be as black as my soul. My stomach feels like a cesspool. I’m sweating at the same time I have a round of the chills. I get out of the car and puke. My vomit has gobs of clear phlegm gilded with gold specks of what, I don’t know. I haven’t eaten a full meal in days. We head back to the K&B drugstore. The bus stop that runs along the Westbank Expressway is not crowded like it was hours ago. The K&B parking lot still has cars in it. Desi parks the TR-4 in a way that gives me easy and distant view of the entrance. Next door to the K&B, Jules’s Pet Store, and Weiner Cort Used Furniture have already closed. Some of the lights 3 in K&B are already off. A few leftover customers leave through the drugstore’s front doors. An employee lets them out one at a time. I see some store higher-ups in their purple-and-white vests moving around like stage characters. Desi says, “Okay, let’s switch places. You drive. You know how, right?” “I can wing it,” I say. I don’t reveal the fact that I don’t even have a driver’s license. Desi brought a white dress shirt to make him look halfway legit, but he doesn’t. He looks like a drug addict who’s found a white shirt. “Okay, time to get right,” he says. “Please.” He splits. I sit, hot and cold all at once. The long drip of humidity covers my body like it’s got a personal problem with me. Diarrhea is ready to leak out of my body. I’ve got to leave this parking spot in case the pigs actually show up. But I am so fucking tired I nod out. Then nod back on. About five minutes later, through the store’s big windows, I see Desi at the front counter. He moves around like he’s jolted up with some supernatural energy or something. A guy who must be a manager walks up to him. They point at each other. They move like puppets. Desi freaks. He pushes the guy to the side and picks up a shopping cart. He tosses it at the big front window. What the fuck! “Nooooo,” I yelp into the hot night. The drugstore’s big window doesn’t crash. The cart bounces off it. The glass must be that bulletproof stuff some places use now. Desi mixes it up with some guys inside. He swings at one of the managers. As though some director just yelled action, a black Ford appears. It screeches to a stop away from the front door. Desi comes out. He holds a white paper bag that has the potion in it. Two pigs dressed in plain clothes leap out of their black car and kneel behind their doors.

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