by John Nichols
Ralph said, “It looks as if a hand grenade exploded inside a haggis.”
Tribby taxied slowly across the tarmac to his parking place. “I never for a moment had any doubts,” he chortled, “that yours truly could rise to the occasion.”
The plane halted; he killed the engines. Instantly lathered in silence, they sat there stunned and grateful and trembling.
Joe said, “I’m never going up in the air again.”
“Planes are a thousand times safer than automobiles.”
“Oh yeah? You can take that myth and shove it.”
Ralph said, “We still haven’t solved our suitcase problem.”
Joe balked. “I’m sorry, I can’t think about that right now. Look at me. Look at you, for that matter. Look at us. We’re covered with guts.”
“Maybe it was a sign,” Ralph said.
“The bird? Of what?”
“Well, it could have been a warning. Maybe we shouldn’t proceed with the dope deal.”
Joe said, “What about my twelve thousand dollars?”
“What about it?”
“That’s my life savings. I’ve risked everything to bring this off.”
“Is it worth the rest of your life in jail?” Ralph asked. “Is it worth rats nibbling on your toes? And no TV privileges? And scarred murderers and child-rapists dragging you into their cells for asshole pussy?”
Joe left them, shakily maneuvering over to his bicycle. “I’ll see you guys around the campus,” he said, using his most surly tone of voice. “Forget the suitcase, I’ll figure something out. I’ll call you when we’re ready to proceed again.”
“God be with you!” Gloria cried. “Jesus will help you if you believe!”
“Send him over to my place around midnight, then. With a little black burglary tool bag and a nine-millimeter pistol full of bullets on his hip!”
* * *
TEN MINUTES LATER, Joe had just negotiated a left onto Route 240, when a VW Beetle beeped in passing and veered onto the shoulder: Cobey Dallas hopped out, purposeful smoke streaming from his freshly lit cigar. He held up one hand, motioning Joe to halt.
“Hello, Cobey. What’s up?”
“Your number, friend, if you don’t watch out.” Cobey smiled to prove he was only joking. But warmth rarely emanated from that golden-boy face freckled with auto-accident scars and boozy dissipation. Joe often likened Cobey to the insincere all-American guys who starred in TV programs—bland and healthy, and forever acting. Always finagling, Cobey was friendly only according to the size of the favor he desired from his mark. And everybody, in Cobey’s world, was a mark. But he had silky blond hair framing a tanned and lovely—if neutral—fizzog, and he kept his body beautiful at the health spa. His clothes were custom-cut and western—ruggedly chic and slick, like a Hollywood cowboy. The cigar, Joe supposed, he affected to create an aura of mogul.
“My number?” wide-eyed Joe replied, all innocence. “How’s that?”
“For starters, I hear you’ve decided to enter the drug racket. Word has it you just imported enough cocaine to keep Chamisaville loaded for a millennium.”
“Oh, hey, Cobey, please. Where the hell—”
“Stop. Relax. Hear me out.” The entrepreneur puffed; blue smoke billowed across his intent, cool-blue eyes. “First of all, you should understand I’m on your side. You need a promoter badly, and I’m a promoter. Here’s the deal. If you and that fat letch and the hippie lawyer try to go it alone, you’re doomed. That’s not how things work in the dope underworld. They’ll pop all three of you the second you put one toe in their water. What has to happen to facilitate the matter is somebody like me needs to assemble a package that’ll keep everyone happy. And I can do that because I’m the best middleman in Chamisaville.”
Blushing, Joe nevertheless insisted, “I’m not in the coke business, Cobey.”
Cobey curled one of Chamisaville’s phoniest friendly arms around Joe’s shoulder. “Ha ha, Joe—that’s a good one. Course, I don’t blame you in the least. How do you know where I’m coming from? Well, take the cotton out of your ears. Here’s the riff. Ray Verboten controls the trade in our bucolic little burg. Auspiced, of course, by the Tarantula—Joe B. himself. For what cut, I dunno, that’s immaterial at our level. Now, let’s say you’re sitting on maybe a hundred Gs of the devil’s dandruff, maybe more. That’s not big-time, but it’s too much to ignore. Okay, Ray isn’t gonna let you dump that on his territory scot-free—but he’s a reasonable person. I know he could be persuaded to give you a piece of the action—maybe thirty grand—who knows? Maybe more. Under normal circumstances, that’s how it’d work. Your cut would amount to what’s called a finder’s fee—you understand?”
“‘Under normal circumstances’?”
“Yeah. But this ain’t normal. You got an extra added problem.”
“This is all hypothetical, of course. But just for laughs, what’s my added problem?”
“He’s a monkey freak—Ray is. And in cahoots with Nikita Smatterling, Wilkerson Busbee, and Baba Whosamadig—the Indian prune they’re importing to bless the statue on Thursday. And Ray knows that the only reason you’re trying to muscle a score in his territory is because you’re working on a deal to buy out Eloy whatshisname, whose land the Hanumans wanna grab for their permanent gorilla shrine. So hell will freeze over—believe me—before Ray and his sharks will let you promote even Kool-Aid to that end. They’ll run over you and Tribby and Sancho Panza with a battleship if you attempt to market even one gram of dope without their okay.”
Joe gulped uncomfortably, wanting to wiggle his shoulders out from under Cobey’s friendly clutch. Instead, he muttered ineffectually, “This is all very interesting, but—”
“Where I can save your butt, Joe, is as a disinterested outside party they’re not on to. You turn over the stash to me, see? The whole kit and caboodle—don’t withhold even an ounce—you could get a death ride, at this stage, just for having too much powder on your fingers. What I do, then, is very simple. I approach Verboten with the entire load and we work a deal. On the legitimate up-and-up. I tell him you got scared, chickened out, and sold it to me for your initial investment. That takes you out of the land rush in Ray’s eyes. In return, he cuts me into the action at face value—that’s maybe a sixty-forty split in my favor. You should remember, too, that the stuff is worth twice as much if Ray’s dealing than if you are. And I pass on the bucks to you, minus my cut for fronting the shit, of course.”
“And what would your cut be?”
“Approximately half of what you would have paid Tribby and the fatso—which should leave you with enough bread to buy out Eloy. Whaddayou think of that?”
“What kind of figures are you talking about?”
“How much coke came in on that Trailways last night?”
“I told you, Cobey—nothing arrived last night. This whole thing you’re cooking up is a hypothetical reverie, remember?”
“Aw shit.” Cobey withdrew his arm … but recovered immediately. He grinned, and, taking another puff, considerately faced sideways so that no smoke would irritate Joe. “Hey, friend…” The arm returned around Joe’s shoulders. “I know how to facilitate these things. And right now I’m your only buddy in town. I’m on your side. You gotta trust me. If you can’t trust me, who in this savage little community can you trust?”
Joe said, “Suppose I told you that I know you and Roger Petrie are embezzling bread from Skipper Nuzum in the bar-and-theater racket, hoping to buy Eloy Irribarren’s land and transform it into a Wrestle-A-Gator-For-Christ emporium?”
The golden-boy face went blank. What? Who, me? Somebody is talking to yours truly? Then Joe was astonished by a transformation in Cobey’s eyes. From all-American blue they changed abruptly to a cool yellowish green while narrowing slightly.
“And suppose,” Cobey retorted with barely a hitch as his arm dropped off Joe’s shoulder and he backed away toward his car, “that I was to tell you Ray Verboten, Skipper Nuzum, and three
of Joseph Bonatelli’s most intimate torpedoes are cooking up plans to break into the bus station tonight, grab that stupid black-watch suitcase full of tea cartons, and put a contract on your head if the goodies aren’t there? So long, sucker—have a nice life.”
Joe raised a protective forearm to ward off the pebbles and dust from Cobey’s spinning tires.
“Oh me oh my,” he whimpered stupidly. “The thot plickens!”
* * *
HEIDI WAS GONE when he reached home. No doubt she had kidnapped Heather and Michael and made a run for the border.
Puzzled, irritated, and exhausted, Joe regarded their living room. The house seemed portentously empty. Dramatic and doom-laden thunderclaps crouched in all the corners and closets awaiting their cue. The vacancy of the air aroused little chills. Halfheartedly, Joe rummaged about looking for a suicide note, bloodstains, a tender (bitter, maniacal) farewell, an explanatory document. Already, their plane had probably landed at La Guardia. Well, so what? His forehead throbbed, his eyes burned, his mouth tasted like rotten cotton, his shoulders ached; he flexed his fingers to rid them of cramps caused by gripping bicycle handlebars. It was time for a bath. A guy could only go so long crusted with buzzard guts.
In the bathroom, disappointed at the lack of final words scrawled in lipstick across the medicine-cabinet mirror, Joe dropped his trousers and started lowering onto the can when he noticed drops of urine splattered across the toilet seat. Michael, no doubt—and one of the kid’s cardinal sins. Joe reached for the toilet paper. Three yards of the monolayered stuff had been unraveled onto the floor—another of the children’s deadly misdemeanors. Michael couldn’t wipe himself without using eighteen feet of bumwad. And Heather needed ten feet of the tissue simply to blow her nose. Someday Michael would piss on the seat once too often, and Joe would yank it off its hinges, tie it around the boy’s neck, and force him to spend a year toting that albatross until he had learned to be a civilized human being!
Moments later, settling into the hot tub, Joe said, “Ahhh…” For two-thirds of humanity, such a self-indulgent treat would be a colossal luxury, an experience of stunning mystery and erotic magic. Yet he, Joe Miniver, scion of the garbage racket, archcriminal, flagrant delictodor, took it for granted.
Sloshing way down, he floated weightlessly. His body sighed, emitting tiny, satisfied burbles of gratitude. Tendrils of plants suspended from the shower-curtain rod tickled him forlornly, imploring him to be less of a bastard husband. Kiddie accoutrements—Heather’s confetti-filled floating fish, Michael’s mud-encrusted sneakers under the sink—broke his heart. All the everyday objects of an ordinary and loving life.…
Joe snapped awake split seconds before going under. Like tetrapods of yore, he crawled from the tub, snagged a towel, and limped into their bedroom. Accepted by the bed with open arms, he collapsed down through layers of comfort like a man drowning in silken roses. Yawning, Joe discovered he couldn’t move—not even a pinkie. Gratefully, he waited for sleep to plant a morphine bullet between his eyes.
The telephone rang. Her lawyer? Scott Harrison? Joe gnashed his teeth. That son of a bitch! He was the kind of lawyer who would invite you to a party and charge ten bucks for the call! Heidi, out there in abogado waters, would be like a goldfish trying to navigate through a convention of sharks. Naturally, Joe would hire his good friend Tribby Gordon—the Mortician of Marriages. But would Tribby stand a chance against Harrison, a smooth-talking, Universal Life pendejo who drove a Pontiac Electra and wore those absurd velour jumpsuits and occasionally smoked a good cigar? Joe groaned. Scott Harrison versus Tribby Gordon, a long-haired chain-smoking, disorganized jock-hippie, who steered a battered ’56 Volvo (missing one front fender) around town, and who was apt to appear in a courtroom tieless, wearing J. C. Penney’s workshirts, beige corduroys split at the kneecaps, and muddy fruitboots or old Weejun loafers torn at the seams. Plus moth-eaten socks, the colors of which did not match.
To make matters worse, Harrison worked out of a nit-pickingly clean office. File cabinets gleamed in all the corners, R. C. Gorman and Fritz Scholder prints adorned the walls, an efficient secretary and law clerk, Laura Hobbes, greeted visitors and typed up all the correspondence and briefs without a single flaw. Tribby, on the other hand, seemed to work out of his car. A battered old briefcase, and reams of legal motions, quiet-title suits, abstracts, letters, envelopes, transcripts, and state statute books littered the front and back seats and floors, stamped not by official seals and notaries’ insignias, but with patterns of mud in neat herringbone rows from the soles of Tribby’s tennis shoes.
Horror-struck, Joe recalled accepting a ride from Tribby. When you opened the door, the wind snatched several important-looking papers that you either grabbed in midair or retrieved from nearby puddles. “Just put ’em in back,” Tribby rasped, “I’ll sort ’em out later.” As for the piles of hopes, dreams, and agonies on the passenger seat? “Just shove that garbage on the floor,” quoth Theodore Reginald “Butch” Gordon. Onto the floor, that is, among more brutalized briefs, manila envelopes, important letters, tennis rackets, baseball gloves, and crumpled beer cans.
And this manifestation of a good-natured, irresponsible (brilliant, yes, but oh so distracted!) lawbooks was going to battle for his rightful share of the vehicles, the land, the inheritance, and the kids?
Joe roasted in the sweat suddenly caused by this dilemma. If push came to shove, he’d have to select his friend, otherwise Tribby would be hurt. Yet his friend was a slob. Scott Harrison—on appearance alone—would run a real redeeming red-hot radiantly rotating legal ramrod right up the shyster-athlete’s rosy red rectum!
The telephone ceased ringing. Could it have been Nancy Ryan with a message for his left brain? Or Heidi from the bus station, saying good-bye?
* * *
UNEASILY, JOE DROWSED. All he wanted was sleep. But his exhausted frame, so full of electricity, continued humming. Sleep cuddled at his ears, whispered tantalizingly, and made his right arm and rib cage flush with soporific orgasm. Then it retreated, ruffled lax fingers in his hair, and hovered like a reticent sleaze, until, aggravated by its cockteasing presence, Joe suffered adrenal spurts just strong enough to keep him from going under.
Nancy Ryan … the plaid suitcase full of cocaine … the crippled airplane … Sasha gnashing his rotten yellow teeth …
At last it muffled his brain like a San Francisco fog: sleep. Or anyway, that no-man’s-land just under the vapor where vivid dreams are a dime a dozen, and you surface occasionally, like a beaver or a whale, for a breath of groggy consciousness. Joe saw his kids being born, watched Heidi ride a horse, and lost them all in a vast field as they melted slowly into a snowstorm.
He awoke with a stifled cry of pain and loss just as Heidi—the real lady—sat down beside him.
Joe said, “I thought you were gone forever.”
“Not yet.”
“But soon?”
“Who knows. I suppose I should just laugh it off—isn’t that what everybody else does? But I feel so tarnished.”
“I understand.”
“Do you? I mean, I thought we were running our marriage on a set of principles that had real meaning. Then suddenly you fall into bed with this slut who’s fucked practically every horny letch in—”
“Hey! First of all, she happens to be an interesting and normal human being. Second of all, every middle-class inhabitant of this town in a similar age and economic bracket to ours except you and me has screwed practically every horny letch in this town, including all the people in your woman’s group, and Suki Terrell, and—”
“How,” she interrupted vehemently, “can you even in jest equate Suki with that—”
“It’s a meat market, this absurd valley! And just because up until now we’ve been vegetarians, doesn’t give you license to call people sluts because they happen to like a nice roll in the hay every now and then!”
Icily, she said, “Excuse me. Obviously, I had the wrong impression about last night.
Didn’t realize you two were so tight. How long have you guys been duking each other behind my back?”
“Aw, come on, Heidi. Why bait me with obscenities?”
“I’m sorry.” She tossed her head angrily. “Let me rephrase the question. How long have you two been ‘dating’?”
“You’re a laugh and a half. Really.”
“Well I happen to be hurt.…”
Wishing that he didn’t have to deal with any of this, Joe accepted her into his arms. “Join the club,” he admitted. “I don’t feel very funny myself.”
“The way you lied, I think, is what really brings me down.”
“It was a one-night shot, honest. When Peter didn’t get off that bus, I panicked.”
“Actually, things have been pretty lousy sometimes between us. Sooner or later it would have happened.”
“Things haven’t been all that bad. We’ve had some pretty good times also.”
“Oh sure. But in the end it’s all boiling down to this.”
“What’s this? Not the end of the world. We don’t have to give up, commit suicide, or move to Cleveland.”
She burrowed her head deeper against his neck and hugged him for comfort.
“I know all that, Joey. I just feel so unhappy.”
He held his wife. Her quiet tears burned against his throat. For a moment he was big, gentle, and worldly, protecting her. She snuggled the way Heather did in the early morning when she cuddled between her sleeping parents like a defenseless kitten. If only they could make love now, this nightmare might end. Their sex together had always been good. Comfortable, funny, loving—they had grown easy together, rarely careless. They could laugh, play, tease, dawdle—or be riotous, bumptious, faintly kinky, at home with each other’s bodies, and rarely bored. Sometimes Heidi ordered him to be passive and worked him over slowly with deft, teasing little nibbles that he loved. Familiarity had bred no contempt. They still liked to collide suddenly in bizarre places and fuck each other to smithereens. Only a few weeks ago, at a party, Heidi had lured Joe into a strange bathroom under the pretext of helping to scout out a lash in her eye: but once behind the locked door, she had gone to her knees and hungrily sucked him. She had wound up straddling his lap on the toilet seat whispering prurient nothings into his fevered ears while a drunk banged on the door, wailing about his bladder. Regularly, on Sunday mornings, they lingered for hours in sunny sexuality. Somehow, they had retained an inventiveness resulting in quirky variations on timeless erotic themes. Only a week ago Joe had been inspired to lay his penis against her mons, and poke both his testicles, like grapes, into her vagina, where she squeezed them until his rubbing cock brought her off. Always, they had managed to soften bad times with intimate shenanigans, seeking forgiveness or solace in the clarity of their physical compatibility, happily orchestrating simultaneous orgasms that usually left them lighthearted and invigorated. Years of learning, trusting, and adventuring had nurtured this physical rapport. So how could I have placed it in jeopardy? Joe berated himself, squeezing Heidi softly as erotic juices began to stir. Then he realized their current dilemma could be solved by a considerate, funky lay—and with a grateful sigh, begging forgiveness, Joe tugged Heidi’s hair gently, softly wrenching back her head, and touched his lips to hers, thinking they would make up now, and it would be all over.