"Balls!" It was a diurnal curse at oneself.
Cassidy slid into the booth where I was camping with a pint of Bass Ale and my Toshiba laptop. Her hair was so black obsidian that it flashed blue under certain lights. One side was bobbed, the other buzz-cut, framing her white Kabuki face. Her indigo lipstick matched the indigo of her arm tattoos. At a nearby table were two horsey women with deep-sea tans. Wearing tennis togs and drinking bloody marys. They ogled Cassidy with bourgeoise disdain.
"Balls what?"
"Somebody stole my newspapers."
"Bought one and took the rest. Sorry, Kid."
I'm a 30-year Air Force retiree with a website. Not much action there. Maybe ten hits a day. What the hell? It gives me an excuse to call myself a bookseller. My military career stationed me around the world. I own about a thousand rare paperbacks, some in German and Japanese. At the moment I was composing business letters. The ale loosened me up to creativity.
When I left Miami I thought I would never return. But here I am, and the place is going nuts over a little Cuban kid. You've heard of him. The world has. Elian Gonzalez. My minisucle condo apartment is located on the 79th Street Causeway midway across Biscayne Bay. An easy stroll from where a famous nightspot used to be. Jilly's. Swank and exclusive. We townies crashed it once or twice before going to Vietnam and other scenic places. Two of my buddies were drafted into the Marines and got blown to pudding. Wo, stop me. This ain't a war story.
I can imagine Cassidy in Jilly's. Some kind of Holly Golightly in black turtleneck and pedal-pushers. She ambushes Frank Sinatra, handing him a zen poem wrapped around a long-stem hibiscus.
And he would turn and ask with a twinkle, "What's this, Doll?" Blue eyes.
"Oops," the clunky thing dropped her cigarets and matches.
Clove cigarets and box matches. The floor must have eaten them. When she looked they were gone.
Barely audible. "Back in a minute."
"Where're you going?"
"Buy smokes."
Ain't that a kick in the head? I struggle for years to give up the damn things and kids today go for them fast as you can say Joe Camel.
I watched her clomp across the hardwood floor in her Doc Martens. She was totally noir, wearing a black muscle-shirt and a black floral grannyskirt that swished in her wake.
She returned with a pack of Camels and a borrowed book of matches. Memory flash. I asked her, "What happened to the Zippo I gave you?"
"Godawful thing torched my nose."
"In The Nam that was its beauty."
She drilled me with a plume of smoke and showed me her teeth. She needed a chimney-sweep, not a dentist. Winsome smile. Goth mouth.
She reminded me of Morticia. Or one of the erotic dead.
Cassidy earned rent money selling out-of-town newspapers from vending machines.She said she lived in a roach-hotel with pink stucco walls and red spanish tiles. The good thing there was a terrazzo patio with a PVC plastic table-and-chairs under a bright Cinzano umbrella.
"So," I asked. "How's work coming along?"
"Bought an SUV Lexus."
"You frigging yuppies."
She returned my smirk.
Don't laugh when I tell you how we hooked up. In the library, at a lonelyhearts book club social. We read"The King In Yellow" by Robert W. Chambers.
Yeah, I like wierd tales. Believe me, she has a wierd tale of her own.
The place we were in now was called a brasserie. Up-scale bar & grill. What would normally be a cheap-eat cost a ten-spot. The array of available drinks, micro-brews and unheard-of imported liquors, was the main draw. Lots of brass fixtures and mirrors. On a Saturday night, with stand-up comics and lounge-crooners, the place could pass for a New Jersey roadhouse.
The morning manager was a scheisskopf. His family named him after his papa in Cuba, so everybody called him Segundo. He sat like a manatee behind a baroque cash-register, ringing up breakfast sales.
He gladly waited on diners, unctuously schmoozing them and snapping his fat sausage fingers for table help. He didn't attend to booths like mine, staying as far from daylight boozers as he could.
I asked him for another Bass.
"Fresh out. You drank the last one."
"Whitbread, then."
"I'll look."
Swarthy, paunchy. Segundo had lustrous wispy fine hair the color of brown shoe polish all over his body, it seemed, except where it would matter the most for a thirty-year-old swinger: on the crown of his dull head. He wore khaki cargo shorts and navy knitted shirts like a uniform. Must have owned a dozen sets. Nike sandals. Wild and crazy guy.
He gave me a Whitbread and wrote it on my tab.
His place was the San Souci. Rose and aqua neon sign.
"Know what you need here, Segundo? You need shirts with a logo."
Frowning. "What kind of logo?"
"A Sans Souci logo. Whatever you like."
"Like maybe a sailfish leaping out of the water?"
"Miami already has the Marlins."
"Don't mention those putas in here."
"Wo, sorry." I remember hearing he had lost a bundle on them through a Las Vegas bookie on the internet.
With his nose solidly out of joint, he decided to quiz me. "You happen to know what Sans Souci means? Eh, flyboy?"
I grinned, all toothy. "Without a care. That's why I drink in your brassy establishment. I COULD carry my business to that trendy Art-Deco trattoria down the street. If that would suit you."
"As if. Now go away with your drink."
I began to go, then I said, "Seriously, if you want somebody to design a logo for you, Cassidy over there can do it. She's an artist."
"The vampire girl with a ring in her belly-button?"
"You should see her tattoos."
"Beat it."
Cassidy had already smoked two cancer-sticks. Her elfin nose was buried in a paperback book. "Lost Souls" by Poppy Z. Brite.
"Ho, gorgeous!" That irritated her, but she let me get away with it because the last thing she wanted to be was politically correct. I simply couldn't help myself. She was the most wonderful thing in my life.
"Yew tawkin t'me?"
"Excuse me, Travis." I sat down.
We shared a relaxed silent time. We watched the morning crowd come and go. The vegetarian bagel people. The Sante Fe omelet people. The hungry-as-a-truckdriver-chickenfried-steak-with-gal-gravy people.
Segundo fed them all. His favored customers, of course, were those who spent the least time eating. They were those smart professional people in a hurry to be somewhere vital. Slim, manicured officer-types. Suits ordering breakfast Continental.
Segundo must have thought their glow of success would rub off onto him.
Cassidy toyed with my Panama Hat. It was part of MY uniform of tropical shirts, faded blue jeans and blazingly white Reeboks. Same lazy threads I wore mufti while on leave.
She was a true creature of the night. Her affected visage was of chalky ennui. I had seen others from her nether-realm with similar masks.
Were we lovers? I may have fantasized a May-September affair. But Cassidy didn't have a romantic molecule in her body. We were two outsiders. Lonesome chums in a foxhole.
Like the bourgeoise dames drinking bloody marys, I too had a deep-sea tan. I had undergone more than one melanoma scare. An Air Force surgeon cut a chunk out of the bridge of my nose. The restructuring work gave me a tough, hard-bitten pug look. Believe me, it wasn't a mask.
Chief Master Sergeant Ted Carmody.
Aircraft Refueling Specialist.
Active duty: Vietnam, Turkey, Japan, Germany and Air Force One, Randolph AFB.
"How do you like my buzzcut?" I asked her.
She stroked the gray stubble on my head like she would the M or W on a tabby cat.
"It's still geezer. You gonna dye it?"
"Yeah. Same color as Warhol's wig."
"Well," she chuckled. "Keep it under your hat."
Segundo was glaring at us.
"I think he wants us to leave."
Her shrug was profound. "Fuck him."
"Let me look for cloves." I wrangled down beneath our table. Found them.
"Oh, thanks!" She smiled with sincere appreeceation. Then: "Have you heard of Antonin Artaud?"
"As a matter of fact, I have. His contemporaries were surrealists and nihilists. There was Dada and the Theatre of the Absurd. His was the Theatre of Cruelty. He went insane. Why the interest?"
"I have this old CD. Bauhaus."
I almost launched into an interminable oration on the Bauhaus school of architecture. Caught myself.
"My knowledge of rock music is nil. I'm a jazzbo."
Jazz, and the Heart of Darkness. Poetry of the Cosmos. Gutsy, raucous, chaotic disharmony that made sense. Be-bop, Bossa-Nova. Steel mills and quiet surf. My greats were Trane, Monk and Mingus. Jobim, Baden-Powell, Bonfa and Gilberto. Balm to my soul.
I looked at Cassidy. She was amazing. Both slinky and clunky. I was hoping she would pass through this Goth phase and, like a chrysalis, morph into something vibrant and even more beautiful.
She was about to begin her voyage of discovery and I wanted to impart to her my zest for life and love of learning. The pursuit of knowledge and understanding should be never-ending. The goal is but a tiny teardrop of wisdom.
"You know a lot of stuff," she said.
"Some people would differ."
"No doubt. Does it matter?"
"Not in the slightest."
"Good. Let's blow this joint."
Segundo could not conceal his jubilation as we departed the Sans Souci.
The autumn sun touched our faces kindly. A breeze from the bay rattled the fronds of coconut trees.
We walked to a man-made cape that served as a boat-launch for townies. Saltwater Crackers. I remembered it well. From there we used to crank up our Evinrudes and zoom off, slappity-slap, to V-hull paradise.
What the hell were we doing? When she took my hand and squeezed it, I nearly died.
"You never married. Why?
"Didn't want to. Didn't want kids."
"Bet you got laid a lot."
"All of them strangers."
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
a glint of eye
A veil of ash lay heavily upon the smouldering ruins. Headless greek columns stood where the wood beams had fallen. Brick rubble led footsore into a scortched arbor. Climbing from the misty aurora, a young girl cancelled all vows. A skirt of school plaid clothed her loins. Her breasts were smeared with oily grime and between them dangled a spyglass on a lanyard. Her back had begun to blister. There were treasures to be found in this desolation. Talc and camphor. Thus she painted her nakedness like a Catawba moon woman.
The Skilsaw spun its teeth across the plank and the end dropped off, joining the lumber junk on the grassy slope below. Motes of wood dust mingled with his sweat. Nape, wrists, and ankles itched. It was noonday July at a cool elevation. A spyglass higher up the mountain would reveal him, a white-thatched man in a blue chambray shirt and khaki hiking shorts, adding a Time-Life build-it-yourself deck to a chalet wedged into an arboreous lot along a populated lane through the Pisgah Forest of North Carolina. He stripped off his goggles and screwed his hawk-eyes to the skyline. If there was a spyglass, he did not see it.
Nevertheless, he felt he was being watched, and he thought: maybe she's looking for me as much as I'm looking for her.
Yesterday he had seen her. A waif amongst the trees at the edge of his property. A feral beauty. Flash of leg, glint of eye. Glimpsed, and leaving much to his fertile imagination, she seemed to be wearing tatters of green plaid and a clacking assortment of pelts, beads, and polished claws. Talismans and amulets. The only sure-shot visual he'd had of her was of those white canvas Keds. His mental camera's focus dot on the tag of blue rubber. A fleeing heel. A trick of memory? Perhaps, just perhaps.
*
The first time he had seen a woman's breasts was when he was twenty, away from Mom for the first time, hoo-ray. Wanton hair-on-fire Moira O'Flaherty, a genuine Truro artist's model, halted their trek through the dunes and stooped, complaining that her heels (photographed and shown at a "Nude Feet" exhibit in Provencetown) were being chafed raw by her new Keds. All he had to do was to pretend to marvel at hazy summer summer expanse of Cape Cod Bay. Looking upon her frowzy melodrama, he saw for just a nanosecond her blazing Irish nipples within the windy ballooning of her madras blouse. A rite of passage, sort of, more than thirty years ago. Keds. Breasts. He thought: I must be daft! The memory evoked the scent of bayberry soap. Moira bathed with it and kept bars of it in her chest-of-drawers, giving her clothes a singular freshness.
Hemingway minted the term "A Movable Feast" with the title of his book about his early years in Paris. A movable feast is a rich and wonderful experience, sui generis, immortalized by memory. It can be enjoyed again and again. That summer on Cape Cod was just such a time in the life of the man adding a deck to a chalet in North Carolina. He savored this feast, smelling it, tasting it, all the sensations, all the emotions, feeling fully aroused. Moira, the artist's model, would say that his recollections had been edited like the canvas of an Impressionist painter. Ironically, the strength of his memory grew from the knowledge of lost opportunity. Rue and regret. He never became intimate with Moira, being too shy, too reticent. He did not return to Cape Cod. Hemingway's book, however, resided in his library. He had purchased it at the Cokesbury bookshop in Boston. It still bore Moira's mayonnaise thumbprint on the last page.
*
At five o'clock he retired to his library. Panes reached to the apex of a dark timbered ceiling, allowing the sun to set especially for him.
A Hank Williams CD crooned: "When the sun goes down, the blues come around."
He mixed a pitcher of Rose's Lime Juice and Boodle's Gin with plenty of crushed ice. Like Hank Williams, the booze was something his late wife had enjoyed. It came from one of her books, an old John D. MacDonald paperback about Travis McGee. Sara never developed an appreciation for high-brow literature. Her greatest pleasure came from the wry philosophic exchanges between McGee and his economist pal Meyer, usually on The Meaning Of Life.
There! The booze was ready. He could almost hear his spongy neighbor Roy Peterson rapping on the carport door. Together they would get pleasantly drunk and also get down to The Meaning Of Life.
*
The story became sillier with each passing word.
Drunk now, he was telling Roy about the girl in the woods. About how sometimes his thoughts would be invaded by gentle whispers, a chimerical voice, her voice, hailing him from the dappled sylvan light: hot summer fruit awaits the old coot who gives chase!
"So, what do you think? Am I ready for the asylum?"
"Don't know." Roy finger-combed his wavy brown hair, piled up from the brow. He was pacing the library like a circus bear.
"Freshen your drink?"
"Sure thing."
"I drove the Jeep into town this morning. Found this book on the origin of consciousness and the break-down of the bi-cameral mind. Heard of it?"
"Nope."
"C'mon. You teach at the community college. Don't answer me like a hillbilly."
He knew Roy had earned a doctorate in cultural anthropology.
"All right, then." Roy's face morphed into something impish. He drained his drink and descended likean avalanche into the leather Master Recliner. His twenty-stone bulk forced the chair to groan. Already his moist blue eyes glittered with enthusiasm. His fake laconic drawl, replaced by a clipped rapid-fire Southern accent from Chapel Hill.
Roy continued: "I HAVE heard of the book by Julian Jaynes. Although I have NOT gotten around to reading it, I don't think it has ANY bearing on the subject of the girl in the woods. Which REALLY interests me."
Hot dog, the man thought. I've got old Roy's juices flowing. "Go on."
"You ARE asking me to tell you a story?"
"I'm asking you to share what you know."
"All right, then. Caveat emptor. Buyer beware. You are describing someone out of local folk myth. She is what classicists call a dryad. A wood nymph. I don't know anything in the literature that says these creatures possess telepathic powers, but there IS lore about Bigfoot that suggests HE can send mental messages to humans, reportedly--causing hallucinations."
"Hmp."
"Sceptical? Good. HERE's where it gets interesting. Tales about her began circulating maybe a hundred years ago. Got that? The plaid you saw came from a girls academy in Asheville, burned down right after the Civil War. The spyglass on a lanyard, who knows? The other stuff comes from woodland living. Folks believe her spirit absorbed some shamanic Catawba ghost culture."
"You're putting me on."
Roy grinned. "She seems to send mental images to her victims. Images from their memories. True, false, or otherwise. Images that provoke DESIRE!"
"Excuse me?"
"From the anecdotal evidence, she scopes out people who radiate certain, ah, vibes, and then she moves in, FEEDING on libidinous energy."
"So, the Keds she's wearing are from me?"
"That's my theory," Roy concluded with a wink.
*
Roy departed for home around one o'clock, ambling down the lane with his ursine gait. Into the pebbled shadows beyond the amber cone of light from the security lamp.
Once again the man was alone with his thoughts. Suddenly he shucked his togs and strode out to the deck. He offered belly and scrotum to the singing earth, penis and brain to the wheeling stars.
Toes over the edge, he thought: This deck I've made is not a magic carpet. It's my Widower's Walk.
A silver giggle resonated from the woods.
"Come out! Damn you!" He shouted to the lunar boughs, and she strode forth.
For a moment he swore it was Moira O'Flaherty. In her wild blazing hair, elements of tree. Her madras blouse was unbuttoned, and he could see her young breasts. Rosy aurioles the size of a silver dollars drew his miserly eyes away from her feral face. She laughed with the mirth of a gorgon as she took in hand his undecided penis.
"You want me," she declared. "Ever since Cape Cod."
"No, you're not Moira."
"Oh? What do you know?"
"You're from these woods. You're something unnatural."
"Come, my shy little man," she said, directing him toward the chalet. "We'll see what is unnatural."
He ejaculated before they reached the door. He went down on one knee. The creature helped him inside and into the Lazy Boy. Moira's face, same as it was that windy day in the dunes when his cock stood in his pants hard as petrified hickory, gazed serenly upon his aged flesh. Cool fingers combed the white thatch of his head. He sighed, "Oh God."
What had Roy told him? She tricks your mind and she feeds on your desire.
"Mmm, wonderful," she shivered, sitting in his lap.
*
"Drive me somewhere."
"Where?"
"Anywhere."
All the time it was Moira, creamy belly with a curly bush beneath, wanton as he had expected, grinding, moaning, slapping his chest, scratching him. Not once did her mask fade from beauty. Not a shade of beast did he see, yet he knew this was unnatural.
They climbed into the jeep. She was wearing white Keds and her knees were lean and deeply tanned. This was the Moira he had dreamed of while making love to his wife. Everything he had imagined was true in the end. The Jeep cranked easily.
The Skilsaw spun its teeth across the plank and the end dropped off, joining the lumber junk on the grassy slope below. Motes of wood dust mingled with his sweat. Nape, wrists, and ankles itched. It was noonday July at a cool elevation. A spyglass higher up the mountain would reveal him, a white-thatched man in a blue chambray shirt and khaki hiking shorts, adding a Time-Life build-it-yourself deck to a chalet wedged into an arboreous lot along a populated lane through the Pisgah Forest of North Carolina. He stripped off his goggles and screwed his hawk-eyes to the skyline. If there was a spyglass, he did not see it.
Nevertheless, he felt he was being watched, and he thought: maybe she's looking for me as much as I'm looking for her.
Yesterday he had seen her. A waif amongst the trees at the edge of his property. A feral beauty. Flash of leg, glint of eye. Glimpsed, and leaving much to his fertile imagination, she seemed to be wearing tatters of green plaid and a clacking assortment of pelts, beads, and polished claws. Talismans and amulets. The only sure-shot visual he'd had of her was of those white canvas Keds. His mental camera's focus dot on the tag of blue rubber. A fleeing heel. A trick of memory? Perhaps, just perhaps.
*
The first time he had seen a woman's breasts was when he was twenty, away from Mom for the first time, hoo-ray. Wanton hair-on-fire Moira O'Flaherty, a genuine Truro artist's model, halted their trek through the dunes and stooped, complaining that her heels (photographed and shown at a "Nude Feet" exhibit in Provencetown) were being chafed raw by her new Keds. All he had to do was to pretend to marvel at hazy summer summer expanse of Cape Cod Bay. Looking upon her frowzy melodrama, he saw for just a nanosecond her blazing Irish nipples within the windy ballooning of her madras blouse. A rite of passage, sort of, more than thirty years ago. Keds. Breasts. He thought: I must be daft! The memory evoked the scent of bayberry soap. Moira bathed with it and kept bars of it in her chest-of-drawers, giving her clothes a singular freshness.
Hemingway minted the term "A Movable Feast" with the title of his book about his early years in Paris. A movable feast is a rich and wonderful experience, sui generis, immortalized by memory. It can be enjoyed again and again. That summer on Cape Cod was just such a time in the life of the man adding a deck to a chalet in North Carolina. He savored this feast, smelling it, tasting it, all the sensations, all the emotions, feeling fully aroused. Moira, the artist's model, would say that his recollections had been edited like the canvas of an Impressionist painter. Ironically, the strength of his memory grew from the knowledge of lost opportunity. Rue and regret. He never became intimate with Moira, being too shy, too reticent. He did not return to Cape Cod. Hemingway's book, however, resided in his library. He had purchased it at the Cokesbury bookshop in Boston. It still bore Moira's mayonnaise thumbprint on the last page.
*
At five o'clock he retired to his library. Panes reached to the apex of a dark timbered ceiling, allowing the sun to set especially for him.
A Hank Williams CD crooned: "When the sun goes down, the blues come around."
He mixed a pitcher of Rose's Lime Juice and Boodle's Gin with plenty of crushed ice. Like Hank Williams, the booze was something his late wife had enjoyed. It came from one of her books, an old John D. MacDonald paperback about Travis McGee. Sara never developed an appreciation for high-brow literature. Her greatest pleasure came from the wry philosophic exchanges between McGee and his economist pal Meyer, usually on The Meaning Of Life.
There! The booze was ready. He could almost hear his spongy neighbor Roy Peterson rapping on the carport door. Together they would get pleasantly drunk and also get down to The Meaning Of Life.
*
The story became sillier with each passing word.
Drunk now, he was telling Roy about the girl in the woods. About how sometimes his thoughts would be invaded by gentle whispers, a chimerical voice, her voice, hailing him from the dappled sylvan light: hot summer fruit awaits the old coot who gives chase!
"So, what do you think? Am I ready for the asylum?"
"Don't know." Roy finger-combed his wavy brown hair, piled up from the brow. He was pacing the library like a circus bear.
"Freshen your drink?"
"Sure thing."
"I drove the Jeep into town this morning. Found this book on the origin of consciousness and the break-down of the bi-cameral mind. Heard of it?"
"Nope."
"C'mon. You teach at the community college. Don't answer me like a hillbilly."
He knew Roy had earned a doctorate in cultural anthropology.
"All right, then." Roy's face morphed into something impish. He drained his drink and descended likean avalanche into the leather Master Recliner. His twenty-stone bulk forced the chair to groan. Already his moist blue eyes glittered with enthusiasm. His fake laconic drawl, replaced by a clipped rapid-fire Southern accent from Chapel Hill.
Roy continued: "I HAVE heard of the book by Julian Jaynes. Although I have NOT gotten around to reading it, I don't think it has ANY bearing on the subject of the girl in the woods. Which REALLY interests me."
Hot dog, the man thought. I've got old Roy's juices flowing. "Go on."
"You ARE asking me to tell you a story?"
"I'm asking you to share what you know."
"All right, then. Caveat emptor. Buyer beware. You are describing someone out of local folk myth. She is what classicists call a dryad. A wood nymph. I don't know anything in the literature that says these creatures possess telepathic powers, but there IS lore about Bigfoot that suggests HE can send mental messages to humans, reportedly--causing hallucinations."
"Hmp."
"Sceptical? Good. HERE's where it gets interesting. Tales about her began circulating maybe a hundred years ago. Got that? The plaid you saw came from a girls academy in Asheville, burned down right after the Civil War. The spyglass on a lanyard, who knows? The other stuff comes from woodland living. Folks believe her spirit absorbed some shamanic Catawba ghost culture."
"You're putting me on."
Roy grinned. "She seems to send mental images to her victims. Images from their memories. True, false, or otherwise. Images that provoke DESIRE!"
"Excuse me?"
"From the anecdotal evidence, she scopes out people who radiate certain, ah, vibes, and then she moves in, FEEDING on libidinous energy."
"So, the Keds she's wearing are from me?"
"That's my theory," Roy concluded with a wink.
*
Roy departed for home around one o'clock, ambling down the lane with his ursine gait. Into the pebbled shadows beyond the amber cone of light from the security lamp.
Once again the man was alone with his thoughts. Suddenly he shucked his togs and strode out to the deck. He offered belly and scrotum to the singing earth, penis and brain to the wheeling stars.
Toes over the edge, he thought: This deck I've made is not a magic carpet. It's my Widower's Walk.
A silver giggle resonated from the woods.
"Come out! Damn you!" He shouted to the lunar boughs, and she strode forth.
For a moment he swore it was Moira O'Flaherty. In her wild blazing hair, elements of tree. Her madras blouse was unbuttoned, and he could see her young breasts. Rosy aurioles the size of a silver dollars drew his miserly eyes away from her feral face. She laughed with the mirth of a gorgon as she took in hand his undecided penis.
"You want me," she declared. "Ever since Cape Cod."
"No, you're not Moira."
"Oh? What do you know?"
"You're from these woods. You're something unnatural."
"Come, my shy little man," she said, directing him toward the chalet. "We'll see what is unnatural."
He ejaculated before they reached the door. He went down on one knee. The creature helped him inside and into the Lazy Boy. Moira's face, same as it was that windy day in the dunes when his cock stood in his pants hard as petrified hickory, gazed serenly upon his aged flesh. Cool fingers combed the white thatch of his head. He sighed, "Oh God."
What had Roy told him? She tricks your mind and she feeds on your desire.
"Mmm, wonderful," she shivered, sitting in his lap.
*
"Drive me somewhere."
"Where?"
"Anywhere."
All the time it was Moira, creamy belly with a curly bush beneath, wanton as he had expected, grinding, moaning, slapping his chest, scratching him. Not once did her mask fade from beauty. Not a shade of beast did he see, yet he knew this was unnatural.
They climbed into the jeep. She was wearing white Keds and her knees were lean and deeply tanned. This was the Moira he had dreamed of while making love to his wife. Everything he had imagined was true in the end. The Jeep cranked easily.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
close quarters (the circle game)
Sunshine gold as bee pollen dusted the lawn in front of the house, an old stucco two-storied affair with blue and white jalousie awnings. A blighted coconut palm tree stood off to the side like an electrocuted man with crazy hair. As I walked up a path of coquina flagstones the place looked more and more familiar.
I pressed the buzzer and a slim deeply tanned fellow of about fifty answered the door.
"Saw your ad," I stated. "I'm looking to rent."
The bee pollen illuminated his odd scalp. New hair plugs. Ugly, but promising. "Sure," he replied. "Come on in."
He lead me to his parlor and offered me a seat on the sofa. Blond chintz. I looked around the room. More blond chintz.
"I've been in this room before," I marvelled.
"How's that?" Perfect pearl teeth.
"I dunno. Deja vu, maybe."
"Maybe."
This guy was undergoing a complete make-over in mid-life. His tropical shirt was vainly unbuttoned to reveal a flat hard gut. Same color as the knobby knees of his tennis legs. Jantzen shorts and Reebok shoes. I became aware that I knew him.
"This is really wierd," I said, smiling and shaking my head. "I HAVE been here before. You're Lucy's step-dad. Ten years ago we sat like this, waiting for her to come down. Our first date."
"Jimmy?"
"That's me. Jimmy Sandusky."
"Christ! What happened to you? You broke her heart."
"Aw. Second date didn't go so well." That's for sure. I had her on my folks' sofa in the Florida Room with my hand inside her blouse, when she slapped me.
"You fucking kids."
"So, how is Lucy? She married?"
"No. She still lives here. I think she would love to see you again."
"Maybe later. About that little rental--"
"Come on. Gotta go out and around back."
His property consisted of his own house and its rear addition, a bed and shower lozenge roughly the length of a Lincoln. It had a private entrance. "Ninety bucks a month. Cash in advance every two weeks."
"I'm good for it."
It was cozy and clean. Lysol and Airwick.
Wouldn't be so for long. I had at least a hundred paperback books, fifty record albums and a stereo to fit into it. And I was a slob. Clothes everywhere usually.
He clasped my arm and led me back to his parlor. "So what have been doing for ten years, if you don't mind me asking?"
"Oh, college and all that. Then the Air Force."
"What are you up to now?"
"Typesetting at the Miami Beach Sun."
"Thought you were a writer."
"Me too."
*
Sunday morning I began drinking early. The Little Farm grocery on Biscayne sold imported beer. I discovered Ringnes. To me it tasted like Heineken and cost about half. So at seven in the morning of the Lord's Day I bought a package of six green bottles. The Saint Augustine grass was still wet with dew. I sat in a folding chair with the newspaper and read that "O Lucky Man" was showing. Good old Malcolm McDowell. My favorite Droog.
The stoners in the bungalow next door had been playing "Dark Side of the Moon" since midnight.
"Jimmy! Hey!" Landlord startled the bejeezus out of me.
I replied, "Good morning, sir."
Evidently he rented the bungalow too.
"If those guys ever bother you, you let me know. OK?"
"Yup. Sure will."
Noticed he walked like a stork.
*
I avoided him as much as possible. Afraid he would involve me with Lucy.
Ten years ago she had been a sweet girl. Popular in school. Something of a socialite. Treasurer of her service club. I first saw her at a Friday night football game in the Orange Bowl. Flat on her back. On cold cement. Suffering an epileptic seizure. Blue marble eyes. Scary.
The scene creeped me out.
Then a few months later I received an invitation to the Sadie Hawkins Ball. Based on "Li'l Abner," this event permitted the ladies to fetch the gentlemen of their choice.
Lucy had been eying me for some time. Well, shit. Who was I to refuse?
There I was, sitting on that blond chintz sofa with her step-dad interrigating me like a homicide detective. Then she descended the stairs smiling like Grace Kelly.
Elegant in a black backless gown.
By some wizzardry I pinned the corsage where it belonged and we left. My folks had loaned me the big blue Olds.
"Oh, Jimmy. What a nice car."
"Yeah."
Suddenly all that I could think of was her seizure.
*
Biscayne Bay was black and choppy with white caps as we drove across the 79th Street Bridge. I kept both hands on the wheel. Lucy sat close to me. Her profile reminded me of the silver lady on the dime. A silk scarf kept her Grace Kelly hair in place. We passed bridge lights in a dream. This was going great.
"So what are your plans?" I asked. "After graduation."
"Secretary, I suppose."
"OK." Now what, Lothario?
"Oh, I know that sounds so dull."
"Not at all. Miami or New York?"
"Ho ho ho!"
"Ho, what?"
"New York sounds so glamorous."
"Hey. Holly Golightly--"
"Exactly!" She had tiny teeth in a tiny mouth. "Oh, Jimmy!"
*
At the time I did not know what a roc was. We pulled into the portico of the Eden Roc, a fabulous palace of gilded desire. Newer than the neighboring Fountainbleau, it soared up on like the ancient bird of yore. The parking guy opened the door for Lucy. I had no idea how to handle gratuities. I left the car running and handed the guy a New York fin. He grinned like a shark and drove off in the Olds.
It was like being in Technicolor and CinemaScope.
*
Our second date was a movie. Downtown on Flagler was the Olympia, built like an opera house to resemble the interior of the Globe Theatre, with upstairs loges and galleries "peopled" with Elizabethans. The ceiling was painted to be a starry night sky. I parked the Olds on Biscayne and we walked the few blocks. Miami was indeed the Magic City, alive and throbbing, with busy sidewalks and arcades.
All through the picture I kept remembering the glimpse I'd had of Lucy's left breast at the Sadie Hawkins Ball. We had been seated at a table with another couple during the floor show and I could not take my eyes off her. Her face held high, she seemed regal. Perfect chin, perfect nose. Her laughter was like little zen bells.
Then she leaned forward in a certain way. The decolletage of her evening gown suddenly presented me with a side view of her aureole and nipple. Pink. Lucy seemed blissfully unaware that her gown was ill-tailored to occlude such a wee breast. Conical, like a Hershey Kiss. The viewing lasted for several minutes and I was discreet. When it was time for a dance she arose and gave me her hand. I think the song playing was "Blue Velvet."
"Oh, Jimmy," she gushed, pressing against me.
My mind mushroomed like the Bikini Atoll.
*
One afternoon while I was napping I heard the clacking of a lawn lounge being unfolded up near my window. I peered through the venetian blinds and saw a woman about my age wearing a leopard bikini. She had a concave belly and long legs which she began lathering with coconut oil. This was very stimulating.
"Hi there," I huffed, emerging from my hut.
"Hello, Jimmy."
Curly auburn hair. Italian sunglasses. Lilith smile.
"You know my name."
"I'm Patty. Fred's wife. He told me all about you."
Landlord had a trophy wife!
"Well, he certainly didn't tell me about you," I replied, mouth-breathing.
"You don't mind do you? This is my usual spot for sun-bathing."
"Feel free."
She caught me looking at her bosom and winked. "Well, it was nice meeting you, Jimmy."
"Same here. See ya."
It was three o'clock. Time to shower and shave and go to work.
*
The next day Patty wore a black Brazilian thong bikini. Top unstrung. She lay prone with her eyes closed behind her Italian sunglasses. A contented smile smeared across her oily face.
For at least ten minutes I peeped at the crack of her ass.
When I was done with myself she was gone. So I went back to the tennis game on TV. Billy Jean King was killing Bobby Riggs.
*
My workstation was a vintage teletypesetter. I was fairly fast, but Morris was a veritable Van Cliburn on the keyboard. Had worked thirty years for the Associated Press in New York. Retired now and living in a nice cubby-hole apartment on Alton Road.
Copy arrived continually from the night editor, delivered to us by a chirpy beach bunny named Stacey. She would sashay in from the staff room with freshly edited copy, always bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Morris was senior typesetter. He enjoyed being the one to say something to her.
"Giving us more work, Stacey?"
"Yeah. Sorry to interrupt your crossword, Mo."
"We don't mind," he replied, giving me a wink. "Do we, Jimmy?"
That was my cue. "Any time, Stacey. So when are you going to go out with me?"
"Oh, Jimmy, you are so cute. But I wish you would lose the beer-belly."
Morris guffawed. "Hah hah hah!"
I was sorely wounded. It was an honest appraisal. She did not have an evil bone in her bodacious body. Imagine the Coppertone Girl all grown up.
On the way out she chirped: "Bye for now, fellas!"
*
My thoughts on Morris were that he led a lonely life. Widowed, living alone. Eating his main meal, the early-bird lunch at one of those depressing restaurants where old farts waited in line thirty minutes before the place opened. Going to bargain matinee second-run movies.
I was way off the mark. He had a lady friend and they enjoyed all the free culture Miami Beach had to offer. Programs at Lummus Park. Library events. The old jazzbo knew where the cats were swinging. One evening Dolly suprised him at work and I finally met her. She was a petite oldster with a silver wig.
A lilting Brooklyn accent. "Maw-riss, dear."
We looked up and saw Dolly standing in the doorway.
"Hi, Hon," Morris replied. Eyes full of love. "Whatcha doing here?"
"Brought ya a Care Package."
"What's that?"
"Whopper with cheese. Fries too."
"That's swell, Hon."
"Hey, Mo," I suggested. "Why don't you go on your break early? Like now."
Indeed he was a lucky man.
*
We were sitting in Wolffie's murdering my paycheck. The cheesecake was priceless. I watched them nibble and nosh. Dolly would sip her coffee and make goo-goo eyes and Morris would chuckle, becoming expansive, letting his coffee grow cold. He was talking about his honeymoon in 1935 and the walk down Fifth Avenue and the stroll through Times Square with his young wife Elaine.
"Oh, the sidewalks of New York were safe back then," Morris said. "Everything was gaily lit and there was music."
"How lovely that must have been, Maw-riss," Dolly added dreamily.
"We were Spring Chickens."
Gradually I noticed a general hush spreading through the eating area. A transistor radio was playing behind the waitress stand. A newsvoice announced that Egyptian forces had crossed the Suez Canal and Mount Hermon had fallen to the Syrians.
Dolly pushed away from the table. "Somebody take me home. Please!"
Of course somebody was me. I said to Morris, "Let's go."
My VW Bug was parked on Collins. Morris climbed into the back seat and Dolly rode shotgun. All the way my Blaupunkt serenaded us with Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto #2. Dolly brightened a little bit. "Oh, that's the old Eddie Fisher song."
*
Time to pay the rent. Bright and early Saturday morning I knocked on Landlord's door with cash in hand. Behind the copper screen someone sighed and came forth. Patty asked, "Who is it?"
"It's Jimmy with the rent."
"Oh, sure. Come on in."
Patty had been dozing in a cushy rataan chair and was now rubbing her eyes.
Again, those long gams. I gave her the pleasure of my attention.
"I woke you. I'm sorry."
"It's all right, Jimmy. Let me get his receipt book"
She was wearing a rumpled aqua cotton blouse and rumpled khaki shorts. Starchless, soft-smelling. Patty was one of those modern women who jiggled defiantly without a bra. I became wary. Yes, she was sexy as hell. But, damn! She was also the landlord's wife.
"No problem."
She fussed about for a few minutes and then returned. "I can't find it. Must be upstairs. Come on."
Up the stairs that Lucy had descended so long ago we went, me right beneath Patty's perfect ass. It was cool and dim at the top. I followed her down the short hall and into the bedroom. She opened the drawer of a teak cabinet and took out a receipt book.
"You know, Jimmy. You're the best renter. Always on time."
"Yup."
I handed her the money and she sat down on the bed.
For an eternity her eyes searched mine. And then time was up.
Wordlessly we descended the stairs.
My mind asked me: "What just happened?"
*
Patty stopped sunning herself. My daydreams of serving her a cold Ringness, maybe getting a giggle out of her, dribbling the beaded bottle down her flank, were dashed. I profoundly missed seeing her. Given the opportunity I would jump her bones. For sure.
I guess you could say I blew it.
One evening in November I found she had deposited her folding yard lounge outside my door. I did not know what to think. The weather was perfect. Breezy and mild, with low clouds reflecting city lights. I sat there and drank plum wine.
Thinking thinking thinking.
"Jimmy," she said in a dulcet voice. "I need to discuss something with you."
Yes, it was Patty, standing like a sand castle beside me.
"Well, sure."
She wore a thin checkered flannel shirt tied in front, calypso style, and hip-hugger blue jeans that displayed a gorgeous midrift. A hint of fleece beneath her belly button.
"It's tourist season, Jimmy. The rent goes up."
(more to come)
I pressed the buzzer and a slim deeply tanned fellow of about fifty answered the door.
"Saw your ad," I stated. "I'm looking to rent."
The bee pollen illuminated his odd scalp. New hair plugs. Ugly, but promising. "Sure," he replied. "Come on in."
He lead me to his parlor and offered me a seat on the sofa. Blond chintz. I looked around the room. More blond chintz.
"I've been in this room before," I marvelled.
"How's that?" Perfect pearl teeth.
"I dunno. Deja vu, maybe."
"Maybe."
This guy was undergoing a complete make-over in mid-life. His tropical shirt was vainly unbuttoned to reveal a flat hard gut. Same color as the knobby knees of his tennis legs. Jantzen shorts and Reebok shoes. I became aware that I knew him.
"This is really wierd," I said, smiling and shaking my head. "I HAVE been here before. You're Lucy's step-dad. Ten years ago we sat like this, waiting for her to come down. Our first date."
"Jimmy?"
"That's me. Jimmy Sandusky."
"Christ! What happened to you? You broke her heart."
"Aw. Second date didn't go so well." That's for sure. I had her on my folks' sofa in the Florida Room with my hand inside her blouse, when she slapped me.
"You fucking kids."
"So, how is Lucy? She married?"
"No. She still lives here. I think she would love to see you again."
"Maybe later. About that little rental--"
"Come on. Gotta go out and around back."
His property consisted of his own house and its rear addition, a bed and shower lozenge roughly the length of a Lincoln. It had a private entrance. "Ninety bucks a month. Cash in advance every two weeks."
"I'm good for it."
It was cozy and clean. Lysol and Airwick.
Wouldn't be so for long. I had at least a hundred paperback books, fifty record albums and a stereo to fit into it. And I was a slob. Clothes everywhere usually.
He clasped my arm and led me back to his parlor. "So what have been doing for ten years, if you don't mind me asking?"
"Oh, college and all that. Then the Air Force."
"What are you up to now?"
"Typesetting at the Miami Beach Sun."
"Thought you were a writer."
"Me too."
*
Sunday morning I began drinking early. The Little Farm grocery on Biscayne sold imported beer. I discovered Ringnes. To me it tasted like Heineken and cost about half. So at seven in the morning of the Lord's Day I bought a package of six green bottles. The Saint Augustine grass was still wet with dew. I sat in a folding chair with the newspaper and read that "O Lucky Man" was showing. Good old Malcolm McDowell. My favorite Droog.
The stoners in the bungalow next door had been playing "Dark Side of the Moon" since midnight.
"Jimmy! Hey!" Landlord startled the bejeezus out of me.
I replied, "Good morning, sir."
Evidently he rented the bungalow too.
"If those guys ever bother you, you let me know. OK?"
"Yup. Sure will."
Noticed he walked like a stork.
*
I avoided him as much as possible. Afraid he would involve me with Lucy.
Ten years ago she had been a sweet girl. Popular in school. Something of a socialite. Treasurer of her service club. I first saw her at a Friday night football game in the Orange Bowl. Flat on her back. On cold cement. Suffering an epileptic seizure. Blue marble eyes. Scary.
The scene creeped me out.
Then a few months later I received an invitation to the Sadie Hawkins Ball. Based on "Li'l Abner," this event permitted the ladies to fetch the gentlemen of their choice.
Lucy had been eying me for some time. Well, shit. Who was I to refuse?
There I was, sitting on that blond chintz sofa with her step-dad interrigating me like a homicide detective. Then she descended the stairs smiling like Grace Kelly.
Elegant in a black backless gown.
By some wizzardry I pinned the corsage where it belonged and we left. My folks had loaned me the big blue Olds.
"Oh, Jimmy. What a nice car."
"Yeah."
Suddenly all that I could think of was her seizure.
*
Biscayne Bay was black and choppy with white caps as we drove across the 79th Street Bridge. I kept both hands on the wheel. Lucy sat close to me. Her profile reminded me of the silver lady on the dime. A silk scarf kept her Grace Kelly hair in place. We passed bridge lights in a dream. This was going great.
"So what are your plans?" I asked. "After graduation."
"Secretary, I suppose."
"OK." Now what, Lothario?
"Oh, I know that sounds so dull."
"Not at all. Miami or New York?"
"Ho ho ho!"
"Ho, what?"
"New York sounds so glamorous."
"Hey. Holly Golightly--"
"Exactly!" She had tiny teeth in a tiny mouth. "Oh, Jimmy!"
*
At the time I did not know what a roc was. We pulled into the portico of the Eden Roc, a fabulous palace of gilded desire. Newer than the neighboring Fountainbleau, it soared up on like the ancient bird of yore. The parking guy opened the door for Lucy. I had no idea how to handle gratuities. I left the car running and handed the guy a New York fin. He grinned like a shark and drove off in the Olds.
It was like being in Technicolor and CinemaScope.
*
Our second date was a movie. Downtown on Flagler was the Olympia, built like an opera house to resemble the interior of the Globe Theatre, with upstairs loges and galleries "peopled" with Elizabethans. The ceiling was painted to be a starry night sky. I parked the Olds on Biscayne and we walked the few blocks. Miami was indeed the Magic City, alive and throbbing, with busy sidewalks and arcades.
All through the picture I kept remembering the glimpse I'd had of Lucy's left breast at the Sadie Hawkins Ball. We had been seated at a table with another couple during the floor show and I could not take my eyes off her. Her face held high, she seemed regal. Perfect chin, perfect nose. Her laughter was like little zen bells.
Then she leaned forward in a certain way. The decolletage of her evening gown suddenly presented me with a side view of her aureole and nipple. Pink. Lucy seemed blissfully unaware that her gown was ill-tailored to occlude such a wee breast. Conical, like a Hershey Kiss. The viewing lasted for several minutes and I was discreet. When it was time for a dance she arose and gave me her hand. I think the song playing was "Blue Velvet."
"Oh, Jimmy," she gushed, pressing against me.
My mind mushroomed like the Bikini Atoll.
*
One afternoon while I was napping I heard the clacking of a lawn lounge being unfolded up near my window. I peered through the venetian blinds and saw a woman about my age wearing a leopard bikini. She had a concave belly and long legs which she began lathering with coconut oil. This was very stimulating.
"Hi there," I huffed, emerging from my hut.
"Hello, Jimmy."
Curly auburn hair. Italian sunglasses. Lilith smile.
"You know my name."
"I'm Patty. Fred's wife. He told me all about you."
Landlord had a trophy wife!
"Well, he certainly didn't tell me about you," I replied, mouth-breathing.
"You don't mind do you? This is my usual spot for sun-bathing."
"Feel free."
She caught me looking at her bosom and winked. "Well, it was nice meeting you, Jimmy."
"Same here. See ya."
It was three o'clock. Time to shower and shave and go to work.
*
The next day Patty wore a black Brazilian thong bikini. Top unstrung. She lay prone with her eyes closed behind her Italian sunglasses. A contented smile smeared across her oily face.
For at least ten minutes I peeped at the crack of her ass.
When I was done with myself she was gone. So I went back to the tennis game on TV. Billy Jean King was killing Bobby Riggs.
*
My workstation was a vintage teletypesetter. I was fairly fast, but Morris was a veritable Van Cliburn on the keyboard. Had worked thirty years for the Associated Press in New York. Retired now and living in a nice cubby-hole apartment on Alton Road.
Copy arrived continually from the night editor, delivered to us by a chirpy beach bunny named Stacey. She would sashay in from the staff room with freshly edited copy, always bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Morris was senior typesetter. He enjoyed being the one to say something to her.
"Giving us more work, Stacey?"
"Yeah. Sorry to interrupt your crossword, Mo."
"We don't mind," he replied, giving me a wink. "Do we, Jimmy?"
That was my cue. "Any time, Stacey. So when are you going to go out with me?"
"Oh, Jimmy, you are so cute. But I wish you would lose the beer-belly."
Morris guffawed. "Hah hah hah!"
I was sorely wounded. It was an honest appraisal. She did not have an evil bone in her bodacious body. Imagine the Coppertone Girl all grown up.
On the way out she chirped: "Bye for now, fellas!"
*
My thoughts on Morris were that he led a lonely life. Widowed, living alone. Eating his main meal, the early-bird lunch at one of those depressing restaurants where old farts waited in line thirty minutes before the place opened. Going to bargain matinee second-run movies.
I was way off the mark. He had a lady friend and they enjoyed all the free culture Miami Beach had to offer. Programs at Lummus Park. Library events. The old jazzbo knew where the cats were swinging. One evening Dolly suprised him at work and I finally met her. She was a petite oldster with a silver wig.
A lilting Brooklyn accent. "Maw-riss, dear."
We looked up and saw Dolly standing in the doorway.
"Hi, Hon," Morris replied. Eyes full of love. "Whatcha doing here?"
"Brought ya a Care Package."
"What's that?"
"Whopper with cheese. Fries too."
"That's swell, Hon."
"Hey, Mo," I suggested. "Why don't you go on your break early? Like now."
Indeed he was a lucky man.
*
We were sitting in Wolffie's murdering my paycheck. The cheesecake was priceless. I watched them nibble and nosh. Dolly would sip her coffee and make goo-goo eyes and Morris would chuckle, becoming expansive, letting his coffee grow cold. He was talking about his honeymoon in 1935 and the walk down Fifth Avenue and the stroll through Times Square with his young wife Elaine.
"Oh, the sidewalks of New York were safe back then," Morris said. "Everything was gaily lit and there was music."
"How lovely that must have been, Maw-riss," Dolly added dreamily.
"We were Spring Chickens."
Gradually I noticed a general hush spreading through the eating area. A transistor radio was playing behind the waitress stand. A newsvoice announced that Egyptian forces had crossed the Suez Canal and Mount Hermon had fallen to the Syrians.
Dolly pushed away from the table. "Somebody take me home. Please!"
Of course somebody was me. I said to Morris, "Let's go."
My VW Bug was parked on Collins. Morris climbed into the back seat and Dolly rode shotgun. All the way my Blaupunkt serenaded us with Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto #2. Dolly brightened a little bit. "Oh, that's the old Eddie Fisher song."
*
Time to pay the rent. Bright and early Saturday morning I knocked on Landlord's door with cash in hand. Behind the copper screen someone sighed and came forth. Patty asked, "Who is it?"
"It's Jimmy with the rent."
"Oh, sure. Come on in."
Patty had been dozing in a cushy rataan chair and was now rubbing her eyes.
Again, those long gams. I gave her the pleasure of my attention.
"I woke you. I'm sorry."
"It's all right, Jimmy. Let me get his receipt book"
She was wearing a rumpled aqua cotton blouse and rumpled khaki shorts. Starchless, soft-smelling. Patty was one of those modern women who jiggled defiantly without a bra. I became wary. Yes, she was sexy as hell. But, damn! She was also the landlord's wife.
"No problem."
She fussed about for a few minutes and then returned. "I can't find it. Must be upstairs. Come on."
Up the stairs that Lucy had descended so long ago we went, me right beneath Patty's perfect ass. It was cool and dim at the top. I followed her down the short hall and into the bedroom. She opened the drawer of a teak cabinet and took out a receipt book.
"You know, Jimmy. You're the best renter. Always on time."
"Yup."
I handed her the money and she sat down on the bed.
For an eternity her eyes searched mine. And then time was up.
Wordlessly we descended the stairs.
My mind asked me: "What just happened?"
*
Patty stopped sunning herself. My daydreams of serving her a cold Ringness, maybe getting a giggle out of her, dribbling the beaded bottle down her flank, were dashed. I profoundly missed seeing her. Given the opportunity I would jump her bones. For sure.
I guess you could say I blew it.
One evening in November I found she had deposited her folding yard lounge outside my door. I did not know what to think. The weather was perfect. Breezy and mild, with low clouds reflecting city lights. I sat there and drank plum wine.
Thinking thinking thinking.
"Jimmy," she said in a dulcet voice. "I need to discuss something with you."
Yes, it was Patty, standing like a sand castle beside me.
"Well, sure."
She wore a thin checkered flannel shirt tied in front, calypso style, and hip-hugger blue jeans that displayed a gorgeous midrift. A hint of fleece beneath her belly button.
"It's tourist season, Jimmy. The rent goes up."
(more to come)
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Divination
The wind licked the gray caul of sky over Hob's Lane. We hurried with our sacks deeper into the moor. My name was Chalkman then. My brother was a thickheaded lad whose sole gift was this horrible method of interpreting the universe. He was cursed with a lesser talent. He could find gold by divinition. Under marble threshing floors and barley fields. Tiles would be chipped up. Crops would be yanked up. Anywhere he sensed the presence of forgotten coin.
Far and wide his notoriety spread. The greed in men's souls caused him great pain. In his wake, civilization grew even more corrupt. It festered like a plague victim.
Once he pointed a thorny twig toward the sea and fools dove from the summit and were smashed.
When ever he felt that hot tugging in his brain, his blue eyes rolled like robin's eggs, and he would cry a garbled complaint. Then, within minutes, he would recompose into his familiar idiot self. Hard to believe, he found coins from civilizations no scholar from London, Paris or Rome could trace.
Some 20th Century entrepreneurs got filthy rich off him. But that is a story for another time.
*
Darkfall caught us midway. The peat fires were burning and the will-o'-the-wisps were dancing beneath a horned moon. We were carrying a load of manifacture from the glassblower to Magister Mundanus. The glass globules reminded me of innards. Able to hold and to drip liquids. Delicate membranes, yet brittle. Each month we would deliver them as requested. He owed no explanation. However, he told us he was seeking Veritas of a most ancient variety. I never laughed.
"Hello to camp!" I shouted as we approached his starblasted place on the moor.
Fumes from his rough lodge reeked of transmutation.
Legend told of his coming. He arrived in a black stone from space. The impact killed flora and fauna within a mile radius. Even today the air about him remains wild with phantoms of both beast and vegetation. Ghostly odors and mushy earth. Now, to these I attest, simply because a septic river flows beneath his ground. Toxic chemicals and raw sewage. His industrial and personal wastes are astounding. Science marches on!
"Good evening, Chalkman," he responded. "Greetings to your brother too."
He was a tall gaunt man with unshorn oily black locks and beard. Dark sad eyes. Too long had he been bound to our earth. His name was Zedek, Sadeek, Siddi. Something like that, hinting of magical powers and perhaps holiness.
He had seen much pointless suffering during his stay among us. The rigmarole of appelations seemed to amuse him.
Tonight he wore a mauve cassock and a burnoose the color of desert dunes. We could only imagine the world of his origin. Were there pyramids and sphinxes? Temples and oracles? Lighthouses and colossi?
The avatar thanked us for our punctuality. He paid us in exotic stones. Stones that grew like plants. Crystals. Most of them refracted sunlight and when properly placed upon the human body they cured dissipation. There were others, not as clouded or opaque. Special ones my brother called Seer Stones.
My brother fashioned a leather cap that would position a Seer Stone over each eye.
"You look like a fool," remarked Magister Mundanus. Although he preached compassion, he poorly abided idiots, fools and precocious children.
"Give him a chance!" I bleated. "He has odd genius. Why, once he designed woolen slippers that massaged the soles of troubled feet. Soothing as well the internal organs of the body."
"Reflexology."
"They still sell well."
Just then, resembling a giant bug, my brother tittered. "Tee-hee-hee."
"So what do you see?" asked Magister Mundanus. He was beyond sighs.
My brother gazed about, eyes magnified to a silly degree. His face fell slack-jawed with ecstasy and rapture.
*
It was a balmy day. The Siberian gales had retracted from my lovely green land of chalk and sod. Sun warmed my neck as I labored with scythe, rake and hoe. It had taken a whole hillside for me to complete my new work of art. I etched pictographs, huge ones. This one was of a robust man with an erect engine.
"'Tis Nature, my lovelies!"
My lovelies all laughed, and ran off to play.
*
I found my brother atop a windy hillock beneath a sentinal oak tree. He was watching two frisky bullocks gamble in the high grass. Together we could see fertile land undulating with hills and dales toward the fresh horizon.
"I have met a woman," he whispered. Brown-faced and strong now.
"Is she wise?"
"Very much so. Not book-learned, but wise."
Did I ever say my brother was thick-headed?
"I am glad to hear this," I said, ruffling his thatch of golden hair. "I am pondering a far journey to an unknown country."
"Oh, I wish I could go with you. But I love this place. Its very elements flow within me."
"I know."
"When will you depart?"
"The day after your wedding. How's that?"
Far and wide his notoriety spread. The greed in men's souls caused him great pain. In his wake, civilization grew even more corrupt. It festered like a plague victim.
Once he pointed a thorny twig toward the sea and fools dove from the summit and were smashed.
When ever he felt that hot tugging in his brain, his blue eyes rolled like robin's eggs, and he would cry a garbled complaint. Then, within minutes, he would recompose into his familiar idiot self. Hard to believe, he found coins from civilizations no scholar from London, Paris or Rome could trace.
Some 20th Century entrepreneurs got filthy rich off him. But that is a story for another time.
*
Darkfall caught us midway. The peat fires were burning and the will-o'-the-wisps were dancing beneath a horned moon. We were carrying a load of manifacture from the glassblower to Magister Mundanus. The glass globules reminded me of innards. Able to hold and to drip liquids. Delicate membranes, yet brittle. Each month we would deliver them as requested. He owed no explanation. However, he told us he was seeking Veritas of a most ancient variety. I never laughed.
"Hello to camp!" I shouted as we approached his starblasted place on the moor.
Fumes from his rough lodge reeked of transmutation.
Legend told of his coming. He arrived in a black stone from space. The impact killed flora and fauna within a mile radius. Even today the air about him remains wild with phantoms of both beast and vegetation. Ghostly odors and mushy earth. Now, to these I attest, simply because a septic river flows beneath his ground. Toxic chemicals and raw sewage. His industrial and personal wastes are astounding. Science marches on!
"Good evening, Chalkman," he responded. "Greetings to your brother too."
He was a tall gaunt man with unshorn oily black locks and beard. Dark sad eyes. Too long had he been bound to our earth. His name was Zedek, Sadeek, Siddi. Something like that, hinting of magical powers and perhaps holiness.
He had seen much pointless suffering during his stay among us. The rigmarole of appelations seemed to amuse him.
Tonight he wore a mauve cassock and a burnoose the color of desert dunes. We could only imagine the world of his origin. Were there pyramids and sphinxes? Temples and oracles? Lighthouses and colossi?
The avatar thanked us for our punctuality. He paid us in exotic stones. Stones that grew like plants. Crystals. Most of them refracted sunlight and when properly placed upon the human body they cured dissipation. There were others, not as clouded or opaque. Special ones my brother called Seer Stones.
My brother fashioned a leather cap that would position a Seer Stone over each eye.
"You look like a fool," remarked Magister Mundanus. Although he preached compassion, he poorly abided idiots, fools and precocious children.
"Give him a chance!" I bleated. "He has odd genius. Why, once he designed woolen slippers that massaged the soles of troubled feet. Soothing as well the internal organs of the body."
"Reflexology."
"They still sell well."
Just then, resembling a giant bug, my brother tittered. "Tee-hee-hee."
"So what do you see?" asked Magister Mundanus. He was beyond sighs.
My brother gazed about, eyes magnified to a silly degree. His face fell slack-jawed with ecstasy and rapture.
*
It was a balmy day. The Siberian gales had retracted from my lovely green land of chalk and sod. Sun warmed my neck as I labored with scythe, rake and hoe. It had taken a whole hillside for me to complete my new work of art. I etched pictographs, huge ones. This one was of a robust man with an erect engine.
"'Tis Nature, my lovelies!"
My lovelies all laughed, and ran off to play.
*
I found my brother atop a windy hillock beneath a sentinal oak tree. He was watching two frisky bullocks gamble in the high grass. Together we could see fertile land undulating with hills and dales toward the fresh horizon.
"I have met a woman," he whispered. Brown-faced and strong now.
"Is she wise?"
"Very much so. Not book-learned, but wise."
Did I ever say my brother was thick-headed?
"I am glad to hear this," I said, ruffling his thatch of golden hair. "I am pondering a far journey to an unknown country."
"Oh, I wish I could go with you. But I love this place. Its very elements flow within me."
"I know."
"When will you depart?"
"The day after your wedding. How's that?"
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
The Gypsy and the Virgin
Grandda used to drink the fetid soma of his own brewing alchemy at the edge of the old royal aerodrome lawn not far from our camp in Somerset. Holding court alone in a wicker peacock throne, he refilled his crusty pewter mug and laughed at the folly and misery of mortal men.
By the time the sun was a mere ember in the western trees, his was a fool's paradise. The lawn was golden in the sun, mauve in the advancing shadows. Here the blades of grass once welcomed home the Spitfires and Tempests, supercharged demons of the air.
That was when young scholar Hestia Wilcoxen visited him with her texts, mimeographed lessons, and an occasional cheap sensation from popular occult writer Doctor Manly P. Hall, known mainly to us sygany as the minister at one of Bela Lugosi's nuptuals in Hollywood.
"Hello, my beauty!"
She squatted in the style of her Indian and Asian neighbors.
Poor Grandda thought she was about to piddle in the heather. This posture had been common in camp for two thousand years, women urinating rough-out, and always caused a wheel to slip a cog in his brain. Hestia's pale knees bobbing up from the abyss beneath the waves of her blue plaid skirt was a sight to behold!
"What are you gawking at? O Pan of the Woods?"
"Ahem."
"Peeping down my skirt. You should be ashamed," Hestia teased. Then she crooked a forefinger and asked, "Is there any wise drink left for me?"
"I try to save some."
"Wicked twig."
Hestia wrinkled her sharp face at the magical vapors. "You would not limit my allotment."
"Never, my dear."
"Such enchantment you propose, sir."
"Amrita! It stays the dark hand of death."
Hestia shrugged. She was young. She waas cavalier and blissfully existential. It was the buzz from Grandda's booze she cared about. Zing!
Grandda was thinking: My mind is immortal, but not my little wag.
He rued the hollowness deep within his groin.
*
"May I?" Hestia asked, pointing to the silver divining bowl.
"It works best when there is a moon reflected in it."
"I must be home before moonrise."
Feeling the rising tide of lust, Grandda arose from his throne and sat beside her on the turf. He took up the bowl and poured water from his ampora. Close enough to feel her bodyheat, he whispered, "Starlight will do."
"Please don't cause me to doubt you."
*
Trying to sound avuncular, Grandda asked , "How did your term paper fare?"
"Either I pass with honors or I receive a speedy dismisal and it's off to be a Piccadilly Communist or a literary collier's wife, barefoot with asters between floured toes."
"What kind of essay did you write?"
"Its working title was 'Tantric Joy Via Telepathy.'"
This rocked him. Aghast he retreated from her aura. Evidently his powers were forces of nature, requiring extra thought.
The etheric bond he had established with her during the previous night bore residual effects. The sticky connexion between his rod and her rosebud remained as strong as it had been when he first imagined it. Be that as it may, the virgin hymen was full of grace.
"What happened to Mister D.H. Lawrence?" Grandda asked.
"Had to let him go." She giggled.
"Professor Milton will simply die!"
"He just might. As my tutor he had insisted I write on Lawrence's titanic rage."
Grandda gloated. His rival had been defeated.
*
There was a portrait in Grandda's mind of Professor Milton, "dean of Lawrence studies" at Hestia's Grove of Academe. The old scholar resembled a young Bertrand Russell, weak of chin,strong of nose beak, with a corrupt smile, as if about to eat Lady Ottoline Morrell's "fig."
On hearing that Hestia had switched subjects for her term paper Grandda clapped his hands. "Excellent, my beauty! Excellent!"
The severity of her grayeyed gaze nearly turned Grandda to stone. Reminding him of strong-thighed gorgons he had known. Wantons every one.
"It's a hellkite battlehag nagging BITCH of a paper!" Hestia spewed.
She spread her loins and fell upon her buttocks. She bellowed a woodsy laugh. She kissed the blowsy air!
"Soma," Grandda hoisted his tankard. "Drunk on it, the great Zoroaster laughed in the face of the hatchet."
He poured another for Hestia. He wished an answer to the riddle beneath her moist furry folds.
Hestia smacked her lips, imbibed, all the while impishly observing the old gypsy.
Smiling like Mona Lisa, she spoke like Sybil: "Focus of Will. Ah, the snake rises from the basket."
Grandda felt an enormously satisfying erection. Her eyes glittered and twinkled.
"Blast! I forgot to mention it. Professor Milton wants to see me tomorrow."
Jealous, Grandda mentally rolled out his big cannon. Hestial noticed a faint tinitus, as if having chewed too much aspirin. In her mind she could sense his manipulations. There was a gravitational flux in her bowels. The sinister Pygmalion worked his will upon her. Aleister Crowley style.
So she closed her mind like a sphincter.
She used a hoary technique taught by Swami Panchadasi.
Grandda was persistent. It's time to sleep, my chela.
CHELA.
The word reverberated through many layers of consciousness. A voice like Orson Welles in a radio play of "The Shadow." Lamont Cranston. And she remembered Grandda's crude hands upon her dreaming naked body.
An image flowered in her mind. A screw. She turned it.
Eager to redirect him, Hestia exclaimed: "The birds are gone!"
Defeated, Grandda realized it was no accident Hestia was named for the Roman hearth goddess of vestal virgins. Her raven hair. Her chalk cheeks. A beauty shone in a clarity from the ruins of pre-Christian Brittain.
"Yes, the birds." His voice cracked. "Our boys with their fedoras and shotguns have chased all those decent of song down to the forest."
"Boys--"
"You DO entertain thoughts of them. Don't you?"
She sniffed. "Some boys are quite beautiful."
"I am sorry if I have influenced you in that way."
"Do not flatter yourself."
Hestia began a dance. Loping barefoot, she took their dyad to the trees. On some leaps her toes clipped drooping boughs.
As if after tea, her mind was clear. Brilliant.
Grandda wheezed. "Stop jumping!"
I am Isadora. The leaves of the grove shimmer in the breeze, flashing their silver bottoms to me.
"Sit down!" He was coughing now.
When Grandda caught up with her she was sitting cross-legged. She had unbuttoned her blouse and was sweating profusely. Rivulets trickled into the hollow between her breasts. Grandda sank to his knees, overcome by the sight. Her eyebrows arched up. She asked him: "Am I being coy?"
"I am not a schoolboy."
"In a way, you are. Old man."
"Pshaw! I'm your tutor!"
In a cadence of condescension she explained: "Women's teats, their nipples, pink, brown, European, Asian, African, Amerind, all have these invisible wires running from them, networking the whole planet, into the cold noonday of reason, and all of them pinch onto nodes in your universal male mind."
Silence.
Refreshed, Grandda erupted jovially. "Ah, already you know how to control a man."
"Just you."
Remembering her recent psychic combat with him, she added, "I would not come here each evening if I did not control something."
"Don't underestimate me."
"You're drunk. Be still and enjoy the fading world."
*
Hestia smoothed Grandda's beastly white mane, thinking, in such a balmy land of chalk and sod any fool could find immortality if not longevity, in a brewer's yeast.
"I must go," Hestia announced. "Tomorrow begins early."
"Fare thee well, my beauty. Pleasant dreams."
He watched her fade into the loamy ground fog. Waiting for the moon to rise, he played Dvorak on the old violin.
By the time the sun was a mere ember in the western trees, his was a fool's paradise. The lawn was golden in the sun, mauve in the advancing shadows. Here the blades of grass once welcomed home the Spitfires and Tempests, supercharged demons of the air.
That was when young scholar Hestia Wilcoxen visited him with her texts, mimeographed lessons, and an occasional cheap sensation from popular occult writer Doctor Manly P. Hall, known mainly to us sygany as the minister at one of Bela Lugosi's nuptuals in Hollywood.
"Hello, my beauty!"
She squatted in the style of her Indian and Asian neighbors.
Poor Grandda thought she was about to piddle in the heather. This posture had been common in camp for two thousand years, women urinating rough-out, and always caused a wheel to slip a cog in his brain. Hestia's pale knees bobbing up from the abyss beneath the waves of her blue plaid skirt was a sight to behold!
"What are you gawking at? O Pan of the Woods?"
"Ahem."
"Peeping down my skirt. You should be ashamed," Hestia teased. Then she crooked a forefinger and asked, "Is there any wise drink left for me?"
"I try to save some."
"Wicked twig."
Hestia wrinkled her sharp face at the magical vapors. "You would not limit my allotment."
"Never, my dear."
"Such enchantment you propose, sir."
"Amrita! It stays the dark hand of death."
Hestia shrugged. She was young. She waas cavalier and blissfully existential. It was the buzz from Grandda's booze she cared about. Zing!
Grandda was thinking: My mind is immortal, but not my little wag.
He rued the hollowness deep within his groin.
*
"May I?" Hestia asked, pointing to the silver divining bowl.
"It works best when there is a moon reflected in it."
"I must be home before moonrise."
Feeling the rising tide of lust, Grandda arose from his throne and sat beside her on the turf. He took up the bowl and poured water from his ampora. Close enough to feel her bodyheat, he whispered, "Starlight will do."
"Please don't cause me to doubt you."
*
Trying to sound avuncular, Grandda asked , "How did your term paper fare?"
"Either I pass with honors or I receive a speedy dismisal and it's off to be a Piccadilly Communist or a literary collier's wife, barefoot with asters between floured toes."
"What kind of essay did you write?"
"Its working title was 'Tantric Joy Via Telepathy.'"
This rocked him. Aghast he retreated from her aura. Evidently his powers were forces of nature, requiring extra thought.
The etheric bond he had established with her during the previous night bore residual effects. The sticky connexion between his rod and her rosebud remained as strong as it had been when he first imagined it. Be that as it may, the virgin hymen was full of grace.
"What happened to Mister D.H. Lawrence?" Grandda asked.
"Had to let him go." She giggled.
"Professor Milton will simply die!"
"He just might. As my tutor he had insisted I write on Lawrence's titanic rage."
Grandda gloated. His rival had been defeated.
*
There was a portrait in Grandda's mind of Professor Milton, "dean of Lawrence studies" at Hestia's Grove of Academe. The old scholar resembled a young Bertrand Russell, weak of chin,strong of nose beak, with a corrupt smile, as if about to eat Lady Ottoline Morrell's "fig."
On hearing that Hestia had switched subjects for her term paper Grandda clapped his hands. "Excellent, my beauty! Excellent!"
The severity of her grayeyed gaze nearly turned Grandda to stone. Reminding him of strong-thighed gorgons he had known. Wantons every one.
"It's a hellkite battlehag nagging BITCH of a paper!" Hestia spewed.
She spread her loins and fell upon her buttocks. She bellowed a woodsy laugh. She kissed the blowsy air!
"Soma," Grandda hoisted his tankard. "Drunk on it, the great Zoroaster laughed in the face of the hatchet."
He poured another for Hestia. He wished an answer to the riddle beneath her moist furry folds.
Hestia smacked her lips, imbibed, all the while impishly observing the old gypsy.
Smiling like Mona Lisa, she spoke like Sybil: "Focus of Will. Ah, the snake rises from the basket."
Grandda felt an enormously satisfying erection. Her eyes glittered and twinkled.
"Blast! I forgot to mention it. Professor Milton wants to see me tomorrow."
Jealous, Grandda mentally rolled out his big cannon. Hestial noticed a faint tinitus, as if having chewed too much aspirin. In her mind she could sense his manipulations. There was a gravitational flux in her bowels. The sinister Pygmalion worked his will upon her. Aleister Crowley style.
So she closed her mind like a sphincter.
She used a hoary technique taught by Swami Panchadasi.
Grandda was persistent. It's time to sleep, my chela.
CHELA.
The word reverberated through many layers of consciousness. A voice like Orson Welles in a radio play of "The Shadow." Lamont Cranston. And she remembered Grandda's crude hands upon her dreaming naked body.
An image flowered in her mind. A screw. She turned it.
Eager to redirect him, Hestia exclaimed: "The birds are gone!"
Defeated, Grandda realized it was no accident Hestia was named for the Roman hearth goddess of vestal virgins. Her raven hair. Her chalk cheeks. A beauty shone in a clarity from the ruins of pre-Christian Brittain.
"Yes, the birds." His voice cracked. "Our boys with their fedoras and shotguns have chased all those decent of song down to the forest."
"Boys--"
"You DO entertain thoughts of them. Don't you?"
She sniffed. "Some boys are quite beautiful."
"I am sorry if I have influenced you in that way."
"Do not flatter yourself."
Hestia began a dance. Loping barefoot, she took their dyad to the trees. On some leaps her toes clipped drooping boughs.
As if after tea, her mind was clear. Brilliant.
Grandda wheezed. "Stop jumping!"
I am Isadora. The leaves of the grove shimmer in the breeze, flashing their silver bottoms to me.
"Sit down!" He was coughing now.
When Grandda caught up with her she was sitting cross-legged. She had unbuttoned her blouse and was sweating profusely. Rivulets trickled into the hollow between her breasts. Grandda sank to his knees, overcome by the sight. Her eyebrows arched up. She asked him: "Am I being coy?"
"I am not a schoolboy."
"In a way, you are. Old man."
"Pshaw! I'm your tutor!"
In a cadence of condescension she explained: "Women's teats, their nipples, pink, brown, European, Asian, African, Amerind, all have these invisible wires running from them, networking the whole planet, into the cold noonday of reason, and all of them pinch onto nodes in your universal male mind."
Silence.
Refreshed, Grandda erupted jovially. "Ah, already you know how to control a man."
"Just you."
Remembering her recent psychic combat with him, she added, "I would not come here each evening if I did not control something."
"Don't underestimate me."
"You're drunk. Be still and enjoy the fading world."
*
Hestia smoothed Grandda's beastly white mane, thinking, in such a balmy land of chalk and sod any fool could find immortality if not longevity, in a brewer's yeast.
"I must go," Hestia announced. "Tomorrow begins early."
"Fare thee well, my beauty. Pleasant dreams."
He watched her fade into the loamy ground fog. Waiting for the moon to rise, he played Dvorak on the old violin.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Fever Winds in the Alley
The lights dimmed and the curtain rose. Suspended in blue was the bedroom, and through the gauze I could see the sparkling glass animals. They were arranged upon a low table. Somewhere was the unicorn, yet unbroken. I settled in my seat, and my own memory play began.
It all came back: the suppertime smell of spuds frying, sugar cubes and lemonade, a fistful of pidgeon seed thrown in the park, the gold-tooth grin of the old shortstop who hawked racing forms on the corner, the milk cold and creamy in moist bottles being delivered to our landing on the fire-escape, and, oh sweet Jesus yes, Sammy Marcucci's jazz, blowing hotly from across the alley.
One evening Sammy leaned out of his window and called to me. I could see him from my position at the kitchen table. For a moment it seemed as if his dark head had become part of that violet space between our buildings. Then a window opened above him and a shaft of golden light beamed down from that roaring tinsel heaven two flights up. This magical light made the sweat on his face glisten. His teeth flashed white.
"Hey, swinger. Whatcha doing?"
I had been writing. Though it appeared that all hopes of continuing were dashed for the night, I leaned back in my chair and toyed with the idea of ignoring him. No damn way.
"What's that, swinger? A diary? I wonder what kind of hot stuff you dream up to put in it. Hah hah hah!"
"None of your business," I replied testily. "Say, Sammy. Why don't you lean further out and maybe take a swan dive."
He let out a slow whistle. "Man, I'd sure hate to pancake down there!"
Suddenly there was a loud banging outside my window and then the sounds of hard scuffling in the alley below.
"What's going on?"
"Oh, somebody is getting his head knocked."
Garbage cans were being upended and slammed against the brick wall. I heard the sound of flesh and bone yielding to quarter-inch pipe. Someone moaned. Then came the sound of scurrying Keds. By the time I reached the window all there was to see was a black kid slumped against the wall and holding his ear.
"How many were there?" I asked.
"Don't know, but he sure as hell was outnumbered."
A moment later I detected a shadowy form sprawled behind three cans. The kid with the gashed ear picked up his length of pipe and slipped away.
For a while Sammy and I gazed down at the silent battlefield. Neither of us said much. Then from that place above us there came a chorus of "heys" and, rolling down in trumpet-like ripples, the hearty laughter of Doris the Archangel reminded us that her never-ending party was in full swing.
I pointed up toward the action and teased, "Sammy, why don't you crash that party? That's where the real swingers play."
"No kidding."
*
The story I was writing was titled "Dead Cat Alley."
The wild ju-ju woman stroked her violin. Her black Creole hair, spun into a hot tangle, shone sort of blue-ish beneath the glare of a naked bulb. She was looking absently down the hall from which you could ease out of situations, obligations, and the building itself.
You exited into Dead Cat Alley, a pathway to that Fresh Start, moonlight permitting. When you enter the alley you cannot tell exactly what lies at its end. But once you have taken your first naive steps into the gloom, things ahead look promising.
Dead Cat is not paved. It simply leads you to the back door of the Inferno Bar, and situations.
The Witch was communicating. Her violin sobbed ancient laments that bore traces of Spain, Morocco and the Louisianna bayou. Our eyes would not meet.
Leave, she said. Leave this place.
Dante brought me a drink. On the house. I poured water, and the green poison turned white. I braced it with vermouth. By now my breath was bad, with a mad perfume of anis and blended Columbian. The drink was harsh, very harsh. A mudslide toward oblivian.
Dante put a finger on my knee. He bent close and whispered: "Her man, The Skinner, is looking for her, I hear--"
"So?"
He straightened up. Stiffly: "So, Padre. It means nothing."
The Skinner had cut off one of Dante's fingers, to get, it is told, a ring. So goes the myth. Truth is, The Skinner and The Witch desired the finger to work magic. Thus Dante ended up in a Spell Box.
The thing that was Dante now laughed nervously and walked away. In the light his black curls shone damp with oil and sweat. Momentarily he and The Witch shared the same smokey cone of light. Then he passed on.
The Creole woman paused in her playing and put down the violin. She took a seat at a nearby table. Our eyes finally met.
"Hello, Padre."
"Hello, Maria."
She chuckled and said, "Crazy man, you know that tonight it the worst night for this."
"I wanted to see you."
Then with her best bedrom smile she said, "This is a public place."
I called to Sammy. "Hey, are you going out?"
"Going right now."
"Mind if I tag along?"
"No, swinger. Not tonight."
His head zipped back into that amber world of whiskey, jazz and prophylactics. He drew down his paper shade and that was all there was to Sammy Marcucci.
It all came back: the suppertime smell of spuds frying, sugar cubes and lemonade, a fistful of pidgeon seed thrown in the park, the gold-tooth grin of the old shortstop who hawked racing forms on the corner, the milk cold and creamy in moist bottles being delivered to our landing on the fire-escape, and, oh sweet Jesus yes, Sammy Marcucci's jazz, blowing hotly from across the alley.
One evening Sammy leaned out of his window and called to me. I could see him from my position at the kitchen table. For a moment it seemed as if his dark head had become part of that violet space between our buildings. Then a window opened above him and a shaft of golden light beamed down from that roaring tinsel heaven two flights up. This magical light made the sweat on his face glisten. His teeth flashed white.
"Hey, swinger. Whatcha doing?"
I had been writing. Though it appeared that all hopes of continuing were dashed for the night, I leaned back in my chair and toyed with the idea of ignoring him. No damn way.
"What's that, swinger? A diary? I wonder what kind of hot stuff you dream up to put in it. Hah hah hah!"
"None of your business," I replied testily. "Say, Sammy. Why don't you lean further out and maybe take a swan dive."
He let out a slow whistle. "Man, I'd sure hate to pancake down there!"
Suddenly there was a loud banging outside my window and then the sounds of hard scuffling in the alley below.
"What's going on?"
"Oh, somebody is getting his head knocked."
Garbage cans were being upended and slammed against the brick wall. I heard the sound of flesh and bone yielding to quarter-inch pipe. Someone moaned. Then came the sound of scurrying Keds. By the time I reached the window all there was to see was a black kid slumped against the wall and holding his ear.
"How many were there?" I asked.
"Don't know, but he sure as hell was outnumbered."
A moment later I detected a shadowy form sprawled behind three cans. The kid with the gashed ear picked up his length of pipe and slipped away.
For a while Sammy and I gazed down at the silent battlefield. Neither of us said much. Then from that place above us there came a chorus of "heys" and, rolling down in trumpet-like ripples, the hearty laughter of Doris the Archangel reminded us that her never-ending party was in full swing.
I pointed up toward the action and teased, "Sammy, why don't you crash that party? That's where the real swingers play."
"No kidding."
*
The story I was writing was titled "Dead Cat Alley."
The wild ju-ju woman stroked her violin. Her black Creole hair, spun into a hot tangle, shone sort of blue-ish beneath the glare of a naked bulb. She was looking absently down the hall from which you could ease out of situations, obligations, and the building itself.
You exited into Dead Cat Alley, a pathway to that Fresh Start, moonlight permitting. When you enter the alley you cannot tell exactly what lies at its end. But once you have taken your first naive steps into the gloom, things ahead look promising.
Dead Cat is not paved. It simply leads you to the back door of the Inferno Bar, and situations.
The Witch was communicating. Her violin sobbed ancient laments that bore traces of Spain, Morocco and the Louisianna bayou. Our eyes would not meet.
Leave, she said. Leave this place.
Dante brought me a drink. On the house. I poured water, and the green poison turned white. I braced it with vermouth. By now my breath was bad, with a mad perfume of anis and blended Columbian. The drink was harsh, very harsh. A mudslide toward oblivian.
Dante put a finger on my knee. He bent close and whispered: "Her man, The Skinner, is looking for her, I hear--"
"So?"
He straightened up. Stiffly: "So, Padre. It means nothing."
The Skinner had cut off one of Dante's fingers, to get, it is told, a ring. So goes the myth. Truth is, The Skinner and The Witch desired the finger to work magic. Thus Dante ended up in a Spell Box.
The thing that was Dante now laughed nervously and walked away. In the light his black curls shone damp with oil and sweat. Momentarily he and The Witch shared the same smokey cone of light. Then he passed on.
The Creole woman paused in her playing and put down the violin. She took a seat at a nearby table. Our eyes finally met.
"Hello, Padre."
"Hello, Maria."
She chuckled and said, "Crazy man, you know that tonight it the worst night for this."
"I wanted to see you."
Then with her best bedrom smile she said, "This is a public place."
I called to Sammy. "Hey, are you going out?"
"Going right now."
"Mind if I tag along?"
"No, swinger. Not tonight."
His head zipped back into that amber world of whiskey, jazz and prophylactics. He drew down his paper shade and that was all there was to Sammy Marcucci.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
The Looking-glass Door
Tinker Wilson sat at the horseshoe bar of The Pastime, drinking his fifth beer and pondering the ruin of his marriage, a brief affair begun in college. Next to him was a young workman in white overalls patched colorfully at the knees who was commenting on the baseball game. "Gowdy is fulla shit."
He glanced over and made note of the fellow's sandy hair and painter's cap. He drained his bottle and bought another one. Then he vacated his valued place and walked. Passing behind people clustered at the bar, he noticed that most of the guys were also involved in the game. His opinion was baseball sucked.
Wilson sauntered across the dead carpet, knowing that roaches and rat turds remained beneath the booths where hippies gathered, wearing sandles. A couple of women shot billiards. Brenda Norcross was drawing a bead on the nine ball when someone bumped her on the rump.
"Scuse meh." Slurred South Georgia.
Norcross whirled, cuestick raised high in the smokey air. "Hey, man!"
The man was already gone, lurching down the aisle toward the commodes. Colliding with other players. She shook her head and doubled-down on the nine ball.
Wilson surveyed the room. He saw that a crowd had gathered to watch a money-spiced game at Table One, the resereved table where a professional racked the balls. Then he recognized Norcross. Playing alone, leaning over her table and lining up a shot. Her auburn hair tumbled heavily about her shoulders and framed her pinched face, pointy nose and chin. She wore a lavender Holly Near teeshirt and snug olive corduroys. He watched her kill the nine ball.
"Easy score, Brenda."
"Hey, Tinker. How are you?"
"All right. You?"
"Fine. Just fine. Well, come on. Belly up and rack'em."
"You with anyone?"
"Nope. Get yourself a stick."
That means Elaine isn't with her, he thought. God he hated the image of is exwife in bed with Norcross.
Referring to the action on Table One, Wilson asked, "You think ol' Willy-Boy will beat that kid?"
"Dunno."
*
Norcross was aiming at the seven ball. She adjusted her posture and Wilson saw the swinging of her unbound breasts. The Jiggle. Before he realized the enormity of his action, he put a hand upon her hip. He squeezed her, saying, "I'll be back in a second."
She missed. "Goddamn the fuck in the first place!
It was the missed shot, wasn't it? she thought. Not his copping a feel.
Wilson had left his can of Miller Lite on the table edge. Norcross took a sip and watched him select a cuestick from the rack. She observed his cheeky ass, held in check by tight bluejeans.
Christ, the things Elaine had said about him. Filthy underwear!
A wicked giggle.
Wilson returned to see her grinning. No, smirking.
"What--?"
"Nothing."
He began a blood-thumping scrutiny of Norcross. She had a body to die for, was his estimation. He felt it was a pity he had not asked her out before committing himself to Elaine.
*
Wilson punched open the men's room door and saw two scraggly bearded young men enjoying themselves while urinating. His mental snapshot: long greasy brown hair, frayed bellbottoms and longtailed checkered shirts. He backed away from their scene and went out the way he had come. Norcross saw his face from a distance.
As soon as the lovers exited she got the picture.
Tinker-boy is confused.
Wilson racked his shin on the unflushed commode. He sent a jetstream of clear urine from his bloated bladder. Miller Lite. Suddenly the door banged open. A redneck drawl: "Sorry there!"
The door slammed shut.
When he returned to Norcross he commanded, "Let's get out of here."
"What makes you think I want to leave?"
His face flushed with embarassment. "Please."
"Something happen?"
"Yes. But that's not it. We have to talk."
"Big Boy coffee shop. C'mon."
They wended through the crowd, going past the horseshoe bar. Someone had selected a song on the juke box. The Doobie Brothers. "Listen to the music--" And as the looking-glass door closed behind them they beheld a reality of limitless possibilities. They walked with new eyes into the warm neon rain.
He glanced over and made note of the fellow's sandy hair and painter's cap. He drained his bottle and bought another one. Then he vacated his valued place and walked. Passing behind people clustered at the bar, he noticed that most of the guys were also involved in the game. His opinion was baseball sucked.
Wilson sauntered across the dead carpet, knowing that roaches and rat turds remained beneath the booths where hippies gathered, wearing sandles. A couple of women shot billiards. Brenda Norcross was drawing a bead on the nine ball when someone bumped her on the rump.
"Scuse meh." Slurred South Georgia.
Norcross whirled, cuestick raised high in the smokey air. "Hey, man!"
The man was already gone, lurching down the aisle toward the commodes. Colliding with other players. She shook her head and doubled-down on the nine ball.
Wilson surveyed the room. He saw that a crowd had gathered to watch a money-spiced game at Table One, the resereved table where a professional racked the balls. Then he recognized Norcross. Playing alone, leaning over her table and lining up a shot. Her auburn hair tumbled heavily about her shoulders and framed her pinched face, pointy nose and chin. She wore a lavender Holly Near teeshirt and snug olive corduroys. He watched her kill the nine ball.
"Easy score, Brenda."
"Hey, Tinker. How are you?"
"All right. You?"
"Fine. Just fine. Well, come on. Belly up and rack'em."
"You with anyone?"
"Nope. Get yourself a stick."
That means Elaine isn't with her, he thought. God he hated the image of is exwife in bed with Norcross.
Referring to the action on Table One, Wilson asked, "You think ol' Willy-Boy will beat that kid?"
"Dunno."
*
Norcross was aiming at the seven ball. She adjusted her posture and Wilson saw the swinging of her unbound breasts. The Jiggle. Before he realized the enormity of his action, he put a hand upon her hip. He squeezed her, saying, "I'll be back in a second."
She missed. "Goddamn the fuck in the first place!
It was the missed shot, wasn't it? she thought. Not his copping a feel.
Wilson had left his can of Miller Lite on the table edge. Norcross took a sip and watched him select a cuestick from the rack. She observed his cheeky ass, held in check by tight bluejeans.
Christ, the things Elaine had said about him. Filthy underwear!
A wicked giggle.
Wilson returned to see her grinning. No, smirking.
"What--?"
"Nothing."
He began a blood-thumping scrutiny of Norcross. She had a body to die for, was his estimation. He felt it was a pity he had not asked her out before committing himself to Elaine.
*
Wilson punched open the men's room door and saw two scraggly bearded young men enjoying themselves while urinating. His mental snapshot: long greasy brown hair, frayed bellbottoms and longtailed checkered shirts. He backed away from their scene and went out the way he had come. Norcross saw his face from a distance.
As soon as the lovers exited she got the picture.
Tinker-boy is confused.
Wilson racked his shin on the unflushed commode. He sent a jetstream of clear urine from his bloated bladder. Miller Lite. Suddenly the door banged open. A redneck drawl: "Sorry there!"
The door slammed shut.
When he returned to Norcross he commanded, "Let's get out of here."
"What makes you think I want to leave?"
His face flushed with embarassment. "Please."
"Something happen?"
"Yes. But that's not it. We have to talk."
"Big Boy coffee shop. C'mon."
They wended through the crowd, going past the horseshoe bar. Someone had selected a song on the juke box. The Doobie Brothers. "Listen to the music--" And as the looking-glass door closed behind them they beheld a reality of limitless possibilities. They walked with new eyes into the warm neon rain.
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