Mack and Needs

There are no rules in Miami.

Late in the rainy season.

Rain fell on the roads and there were puddles the size of lakes. Rain fell on the canals like teardrops. Rain fell on flamingo and pelican and warbler perched in the tree. Rain fell on Royal Palm, Loblolly Pine, and Red Mulberry tree. Rain fells on Coral Gables, Kendall, Cutler Ridge, and Homestead.

In North Miami the rain raged. Rain raged down on Opa Locka. Rain raged down on Hallandale and Sunny Isles. And at the Kmart off Biscayne Blvd in Miami Shores the rain raged down as hard as can be.

Sandra Mack and Charles Needs were shopping inside.

Sandra’s curly black hair was wet and stuck to her bare cinnamon shoulders. She wore a black BEBE tank top, a white skirt, and Steve Madden kicks. Needs rocked a wife-beater and blue shorts, no socks, flip-flops, a tribal tat rapped around his arm. Her eighteen-month old girl, Heather, sat in the cart.

Sandra and Needs couldn’t keep their hands off each other. She pushed the cart—he was right behind her. There was a swell in his pants. It rubbed against her backside. He was in heat.

Charles Needs just got out of jail. He just got out of jail, again.

This time he beat up some guy at a bar who was flirting with her.

"Stop," said Sandra, looking around Kmart. "People are watching."

"No one’s watching."

"There’s always someone watching, stupid."

There was a black bubble hanging from the ceiling and behind the black bubble a camera. The camera transmitted to a video screen and in front of the video screen was a fat slovenly fellow in a tan jumpsuit with the name Mickey stitched across his right breast.

Mickey Bellows was Kmart security and he worked in a small hidden room that was dark and musty. The walls were decorated with Polaroid pictures of shoplifters. It was a gallery of infamy and shame. Mickey knew by heart every face that stared him down and if any of those motherfuckers ever dared to walk into HIS store…it was over.

Mickey had a glazed donut in his hand. He had his eye on Sandra Mack and Charles Needs.

Needs cupped Sandra’s breast in one hand and quickly rubbed his other hand up and down over her valley.

"Behave, you beast."

"You like it, Sandra."

"You want back in the pen."

The latest incident happened at The Nightcap Lounge on Dixie Hwy in North Miami Beach—Needs was convinced this fella talking to his girl was a threat. It might’ve been the cocaine—might’ve been the liqueur—maybe he was just paranoid—but something brought out the animal in him. Needs had a pool stick—soon he had two pool sticks after he cracked it over the innocent flirt’s head. You don’t fuck with Needs. There was a huge fight—the innocent flirt had friends—and Needs was taken away by the cops.

Sandra hated when he acted like that, the jealous brute, why does he have to be so violent, oh, yeah, she hated it, she hated him, she loved to hate him.

Next morning the message on her machine was from him: I’m in jail. I need you to post bail.

Sandra trekked down to NW 13th Street and bailed his ass out of the booking facility at the Pre-Trial Detention Center. But what did it matter? He was VOP—violation of probation—he got six months time served. They threw him in the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on NW 41st Street. He killed most of the time playing spades. Sandra stopped in a few times a week during visitation hours between 7:00 and 9:00 P.M.

Needs came out of jail with more connections than he had when he went in. He befriended one guy from Hialeah who ran a chop shop. You get me a PT Cruiser when you’re out and I’ll get you two grand. Another kid he met in the can, from Sweetwater, he promised rohypinols at a dollar a pop. That’s what I said, dude, roofies, I can get roofies.

Was Needs supposed to come out of jail more corrupt? Was that what the system promised? Maybe the system wasn’t working. Somewhere along the line the system might have cracked.

In Kmart the slashed prices were falling off the display cases, from $9.87, rollback to $9.12, Lower Prices Always, down to $8.47 for a pair of blue slippers designed to look like the Cookie Monster.

Sandra Mack and Charles Needs made their way through the superstore from the shoe department to the area where the diapers were. They dodged soccer moms with bratty offspring, retail clerks cloaked in red vests, and shoppers pushing gray carts.

The eighteen-month old Heather, ready for a nap, was complacent throughout, sucking on a pacifier.

Needs was not complacent.

By the paper goods he blew in her ear. Next to jewelry he pinched her nipples. In the auto repair section he massaged her neck. Near paper goods he grabbed her ass. At home furnishings he twisted her around and stuck his tongue down her soul.

Sandra’s hair wasn’t the only thing that was wet. Her zone was on red alert. Her zone was starting to heat up. It had been awhile for her too. And the kisses and nibbles on her neck only added to the heat. FIRE. She started to push the cart toward the corner of the store. There was no one around in the corner. She was on fire. WE DON’T NEED NO WATER LET THE MOTHER FUCKER BURN. And in the corner of the super-store amid the Keds socks and the Scooby-Doo Fruit of the Loom briefs he raised her skirt and stuck it inside her.

According to Florida statute 800.02 any person who performs an unnatural and lascivious act with another person commits a misdemeanor of the second degree. That penalty carries a maximum of sixty days in jail. However, in the presence of a child under the age of sixteen that lewd and lascivious act is bumped up to a second-degree felony to which carries a maximum of fifteen years in jail.

Couldn’t they control themselves? Did they really think they could get away with it? Did they really think no one was watching?

Old Mickey Bellows was watching.

Mickey saw it from the start. He got on the walkie-talkie and told the cop on the floor the 411.

Meanwhile, Needs, in the corner, was feeling nothing but Sandra. Nothing but warm, tight, wet, Sandra.

It was not going to last long. It had been awhile for him and it was already building. It was rising. It was building. Building. Building. It was coming. It was coming for both of them. It was coming, almost, there, right, now, here, it, comes…

A big police paw landed on Charles Needs’ shoulder.

John Colagrande Jr. has recently had his fiction appear in Carve, Big Bridge, The Miami Herald, The Miami Sun Post, and Mary. "Mack and Needs" is from his collection Miami, a work in progress.

Email: John Colagrande Jr.

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