by John Nichols
“You talking about the cocaine?”
Joe cringed again. “I guess you could say … yeah … it’s something like that.…” God, he had a terror of incriminating himself! He could just hear their ears flapping, their tape recorders humming. How could Peter so blatantly ignore security precautions?
“Relax, José. Not to worry. I already put the goods on the bus before we had the fight.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“What do you think I’m gonna do, travel two thousand miles in the same vehicle with a suitcase full of coke? Some tipped-off Nazi halts the bus, ransacks the luggage, discovers the stash, and next thing you know I’m a suspect. Huh-uh, no sir, not me. I checked it through on the midday crate that left six hours earlier.”
“You checked it through to Chamisaville?”
“I didn’t send it to Anchorage, Alaska.”
“What do I do, then—just go down to the station and claim a bag?” It seemed hideously simple.
“Sure, you can’t miss it. A lightweight green airport bag labeled ‘Cocaine—Handle with Care.’”
“You’re kidding!”
“Don’t jump out of your skin, dummy. It’s in a cloth valise with a Scottish plaid pattern on the sides. Greenish and dark—I think the pattern is called black watch.”
“Can you send me the claim check, special delivery?”
“Nope. I lost it.”
“Suppose they know there’s that … stuff inside?”
“You referring to the cocaine?”
“Yes, you bastard. They might have a stakeout at the bus station. Every day I read about some sucker who walks into a trap—picks up a suitcase, or claims a package at the post office.”
“Lighten up, friend. You watch too much television. Yesterday I read an article said eighty percent of the crime in this country goes undetected, let alone unsolved. Now listen, I gotta hang up. This call is on a phony credit card and I don’t wanna work up a suspiciously big bill.”
“You’re calling me illegally?”
“Don’t shit a brick. I do it all the time.”
“You mean some operator a month from now will ring me up asking who called on such-and-such a date, attempting to track it down?”
“Lie. You never got the call. Philadelphia?—where’s that, a city in Nevada? Use your imagination. Oh, by the way.…”
“What?”
“In this morning’s blat I read a little item. Apparently a U-Haul trailer carrying a sacred east Indian monkey statue bound for your home town had a flat tire in the Holland Tunnel yesterday and held up traffic for two hours. You shoulda read the names of the people in that U-Haul. Wait a sec—where is that paper? Listen to this mouthful. Baba Ram Bang. Rama and Shanti and Om Unfug. Iréné Papadraxis. Wilkerson Busbee. Fluff Dimaggio. They really got human beings monikered like that in Chamisaville?”
“Yup.”
“Well about this monkey statue—whadda they call it here? A Hanuman. What’s it all mean?”
“You’re asking me?”
“There’s somebody else on the phone?”
“I don’t know, Peter. It’s religious. You know—swamis, gurus, that whole scene. Now listen, I didn’t get much sleep last night. I’m tired.…”
“I’ll bet you are. Lots of luck. Ciao, sweetheart.…”
Dazedly, Joe said “ciao.” If he had had any doubts earlier, they were now dispelled: his ass was firmly caught in a royal sling. How could Peter come on so aggravatingly flippant?
Joe stared at the telephone for a moment after Peter had hung up. Hit by a sudden frost, all the green leaves on the tree of his upcoming summer had suddenly turned yellow. And, prompted by the chilly winds of his own stupidity and temerity, they were cascading in droves off all the branches of his deciduous hopes and dreams.
Heather warned, “God is gonna turn you into a potato.”
“Not before he turns you into a Hobbit with leprosy.”
“What’s leprosy?”
“What I’ve got.” Joe cradled the phone, closed his eyes, and walked into the moving airplane propeller of the master bedroom.
* * *
ON THE EDGE of their bed, hands in her lap, Heidi dismally confronted the floor. Joe experienced an abrupt surge of adrenaline: curiously, it created almost instant euphoria. With astonishing clairvoyance, he realized he was in so deep already, lying would actually be easy. As long as there existed an outside chance that the gossip hadn’t reached Heidi, it was worth a shot. Why cultivate moral pretensions at this late date?
Flopping into another of their two-dollar easy chairs, Joe said, “Listen, I got drunk at the bar, I’ll admit. I was nervous, so I really tied one on. Then, when Peter didn’t show at the bus station, I crashed emotionally. Back at the plaza I found Ralph, and we rapped over a bottle of Black Jack in his office almost until dawn. Then we hit Marilyn Tibby’s place for breakfast and a shower. That’s it, kit and caboodle. I’m only sorry that I didn’t phone.”
The words had pirouetted off his tongue like tiny silver dancers!
“Nancy Ryan telephoned about an hour ago.”
“Oh—?” Mr. Casual raised his eyebrows in supercilious unconcern (while a diamond-tipped dagger vivisected his heart like a Safeway butcher preparing chopped liver three minutes before quitting time on Friday). “What did she want?” He tried to make his voice sound as if he thought Nancy (who?) was on extended sabbatical in the Himalayas and not due back in town for years.
“I wouldn’t even presume to guess.”
“Well, I’ll give her a call someday.”
“She said it was urgent.”
“What could be so urgent? I hardly know her.”
“She said you left your watch over there last night.”
“Oh shit.” Talk about perfidy!
The safety cable to the Elevator of Life broke, and Joe felt himself plummeting swiftly toward his doom, a deafening whine reverberating in his ears as he plunged down the 102 floors of Sudden Catastrophe, aiming toward total disintegration against a concrete slab in the basement of Familial Tragedy at the bottom of the shaft.
“She said I left my watch over there?” That bitch! How could human beings be so devious? His first instinct was to strangle her—Nancy, that is. Then he felt sick. The whole town knew about his ram-bam with her, probably word would have reached Heidi by tomorrow, but he had to go and compound his predicament today by getting caught in a great and foolish lie that tarred and feathered him with gratuitous shame. What had President Kennedy said about life—that it wasn’t fair? How true! Ridiculous as it might seem, their entire universe would now collapse because of a few banal hours trysting in a little tract home, surrounded by metaphysical monkey paintings employing the bright colors of cockatoo feathers.
Joe had a powerful need to explain it wasn’t his fault, it was meaningless, her tears were stupid.
Heidi confirmed, “That’s what she said.”
“Oh.”
They sat on their respective perches dully inspecting the rug. Sunshine pouring through the windows glazed her limbs the color of cinnamon butter. Such an apparition of middle-class health! A pretty phantom from Forest Hills! A debutante from south shore Long Island! Joe was going to miss his ever-lovin’ woman rolling in his arms.
“It’s so creepy,” Heidi whispered. “I don’t know what to say.”
“I’m a little thunderstruck myself.”
“What I don’t understand is why did you do it with somebody like her?”
“Who would be better?” he snapped, surprised by the immediate anger her question aroused.
“I always thought maybe we could avoid this scene,” Heidi remarked quietly. Silently, Joe pleaded with her to show an emotion other than this morose passivity. Why couldn’t she stand up and grab a meatloaf?
“It’s stupid,” he admitted. “Obviously, I’m sorry.”
“Well, I suppose I deserved it. I suppose we’ve been headed for something like this all along.”
&nb
sp; “I don’t know, I really don’t.” Tongue-tied, embarrassed, he was out—way out—of his depth on this one.
“Now we’re just like everybody else, Joey. You know what? I’ve been walking around these past couple of years feeling superior to all our friends because somehow we had avoided all the sexual bullshit going down out there. Somehow we were strong enough to be above it all.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Well, so much for my snot-nosed superiority. I sure had it coming.”
“Look,” he said lamely, “it didn’t have anything to do with love or even honest attraction. It just happened out of the blue. Peter didn’t arrive and I guess I freaked. It was a crazy accident. I feel so close to you and Heather and Michael. We’re nice together, we have a wonderful family. I couldn’t come with her—does that even count these days?”
“I don’t understand what would make a person call up here like that. How could you fuck a woman who’s that vicious? And spare me the sordid details, would you?”
Her bitter use of the word fuck to describe last night’s experience angered him. “Let’s not discuss it, okay? What’s done is done. I’m sorry, I blew it. I take all the blame, it’s all my fault.”
“Oh, aren’t you noble.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“All right, so what now? We just forget about it? Pretend it never happened?”
“I don’t know. I have no experience playing this scene.”
“You don’t like me sexually?”
“That’s a lie and you know it.”
“What are we going to do, sweep it under the rug?”
“Yes … no … maybe. Unfortunately, right now I’m supposed to figure out how to retrieve a plaid suitcase full of cocaine from the bus station in time to meet Tribby and Ralph out at the airport at noon.”
“God, you’re gross.”
“I can’t just ignore it, can I?”
“Oh no, first things first, naturally. I’ll just stay home and answer the telephone.”
He hated her. Barely one hour a woman scorned, and already she was playing the martyr role. Oh for the guts to break her jaw! Then he wondered, come nightfall, if he dared to grab some Zs under the same roof with her, would she stab him in the chest with a carving knife? Or would they never make love again?
Heidi blurted tearfully, “I think you’re a first-class shitheel.”
“You’re right. I apologize. What else can I say?”
“Did you have to lie so blatantly? That makes me feel creepy.”
“For what it’s worth, I don’t feel so hot myself.”
“You’re a lousy liar. You blush solid-crimson.”
He shrugged pathetically.
“Why did you have to do it like that, then?”
“What would have been a better way? I walk through the door and announce to everybody within earshot that I just plugged this broad?”
“I’m amused—ha ha.”
“Well, you don’t have to rub it in—I know I’m a jerk. I blew it. I wish I hadn’t, believe me. I don’t know how it happened.”
“How did it happen?”
“I really don’t feel like rehashing the ‘sordid details.’”
“How about it—was she a great lay?”
“I’m getting out of here.” Joe stood up. “The longer that bag stays in the bus station, the more chance there is that somebody will discover what’s in it. I’ll take the kids. You’re less suspicious if you have children.”
“And I’ll just sit around here stewing in my own juices, is that it?”
“I don’t care what you do. I can’t deal with it right now. Life is complicated enough.”
“When will you want to talk about it?”
“Heidi, can’t we take things one at a time?”
“Oh sure. And what does my master want me to tell her if she calls again?”
“Tell her to go screw herself!” Furiously, he strode from the room.
Heather looked up from her dolls. “I’m not going over to any bus station with a Fascist.”
“Fine, great, beautiful.” Joe stormed out of the house feeling breathless.
“Don’t get a hernia!” was his witty and sarcastic daughter’s parting salvo.
Of course, he had forgotten his glasses, his wallet, and his car keys. But he couldn’t return to the lion’s den. So the diabolical master of the false exit would have to pedal a bike!
* * *
ON THE WAY in to town, pumping his three-speed bicycle (with Michael trailing behind on a contraption with a raised banana seat, suicide handlebars, and a two-foot front-wheel extension that resembled a Hell’s Angels’ lascivious chopper), Joe crucified Nancy Ryan. Fortified by a bottle of Wild Turkey 101 and a handful of green pills, he kicked in her plywood door, strangled the monkey, axed to death the foaming Doberman, stuffed her kid into the washing machine and turned it on, chucked the parakeet into the dishwasher (added a box of Tide and spun the dial), collected all the metaphysical paintings and smashed them over her head (after first ripping off her clothes and committing a brutal rape), then slugged her insensate, dumped her into the bathtub hopelessly entangled in torn canvas and shattered stretchers, turned on the scalding hot water, and watched her drown.
“Jesus, people play dirty!” One thing for certain, anyway—he’d never see that diabolical weirdo again.
At the Ranchitos Cantina, Mimsy and Tuckums rushed them like kamikazes. Michael braked and cocked his BB gun. But Joe urged caution.
“Hold on, man, they won’t bite. The thing we have to do is ignore them. If we do, they’ll see we aren’t a threat, and leave us alone.”
“I hate dogs when I’m on my bike,” Michael grumbled. “I wish I had an M-16.”
“Just pedal along. Don’t even look at them. I guarantee they won’t touch us.”
The dogs raised a fierce ruckus, snarling, foaming at the lips and snapping at their heels for about twenty yards. But they stopped abruptly upon reaching the perimeter of an invisible territory.
Joe said, “See? Listen to your old man, kid, and you’ll grow up to be tolerant, wise, and magnanimous.”
Michael asked, “What’s gonna happen between you and Mom?”
“I dunno. Nothing. Why?”
“Before you came home she was really mad. She said she hoped you got drunk and slipped on a banana peel and broke your neck. What did you do, Pop?”
“Nothing. It’s none of your business.”
“How come every time I ask you a question about something important, you always answer ‘nothing,’ or that it’s ‘none of my business’?”
Joe said, “What happened to Dick Tracy today?”
“I forget. Pop—?”
“Don’t talk to me right now, I’m in a foul mood.”
“But that’s not fair.”
“Who ever said life would be fair?”
“She started crying and said maybe you and her weren’t gonna live together anymore.”
“Oh God, what’s the matter with her? Did she announce it to the entire valley on a bullhorn? I swear, sometimes your mother has about as much brains as a newt.”
“What’s a newt?”
“It’s a slimy little red lizard that lives under wet logs.”
“Like a salamander?”
“Yeah, I guess so. I haven’t seen a newt since I was ten.”
Ed Diebold, hospital surgeon, Jaycee vice-president, and gung-ho Lion, drove by in his little red Toyota—Joe waved. A little farther along, Tad Hooten’s gray Mazda zipped by. From the passenger seat Meridel Smatterling waved. Meridel’s two kids from her former marriage to Nikita—Sanji and Tofu—had hair down to their gazots and spent twenty-three hours a day on skateboards, circling the plaza, doing tricks in the grammar-school macadam parking lot, or zooming dangerously down the hill leading from the 7-Eleven to the Safeway parking lot. Both Sanji and Tofu had been busted three or four times for smoking pot, which Joe happened to know they got from their fathe
r, who every year planted a lavish herb garden, including almost an eighth of an acre of German sweet basil, otherwise known as the best cannabis in town.
The next person to approach was Darlene Johnson’s live-in lover, Spumoni Tatarsky, a jive little hypester so full of bull, so offensive, and so unalterably shallow that he positively gleamed with insincerity. Joe would walk a mile out of his way to avoid the man. Spumoni roller-skated around town wearing crushed-velour flame-purple jackets, pink shirts with ruffled paisley jabots, garish concho belts, turquoise rings on every finger, and leather bell-bottoms. His five-foot-five-inch frame was dwarfed by Darlene’s six-foot body, but his ego was twelve feet tall and growing. Spumoni lied like a hound, hustled like a Times Square hooker, barked like a carnival barker, and just could not be put down, embarrassed, or in any way turned aside from his appointed rounds in life, which included pushing every kind of bourgeois drug or narcotic on the market, from coke through mescaline to LSD. Using laser beams, he manufactured hokey holograms and dichromates, which he peddled from a dozen Chamisaville curio shops. Other scams dangling on his repertoire included the mass fabrication of pornographic scrimshaws etched on plastic ivory, and the relentless pursuit of tail. Far be it from Joe to understand how Darlene could even remotely put up with it. Spumoni’s rampant mistresses usually moved in with him and Darlene and their one-year-old child, Moonglow Winterwind, whom Darlene lugged around town in a deerskin cradleboard. Joe had heard rumors of as many as three mistresses living with Spumoni and Darlene at one time. Usually they were nubile teenyboppers, covered with Tatoozies, who wore filthy granny dresses and work boots, and, totally scragged from the pills, thrills, and spills they had taken so early on in life, had become professional runaways in search of a benevolent Charlie Manson.
So along came Spumoni on roller skates; Moonglow Winterwind was shoved into an old army knapsack on his back. Spumoni wore a knitted (and earflapped) Norwegian Lapp cap, a moth-eaten silk ascot, a T-shirt on which a tuxedo had been painted, a red velour jacket with buttons made out of old silver dollars, an enormous and voluptuous (and obscene) concho belt, and leopard-skin flare cuffs. Moonglow’s blue baseball cap said “NAPA” on the front; the tyke’s beautiful goat-fur vest had to have come from Tibet or Afghanistan, no doubt by way of Wilkerson Busbee’s shop.