The Nirvana Blues

by John Nichols

  “Which dwarf?”

  “Joe’s kid—Ephraim.”

  “He’s in the hospital with a bullet wound.”

  “I said ‘if I didn’t know better.’”

  Tribby frowned, then squinched up his entire face perplexedly: “One thing that makes sense—that little jerk can fly.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I kept bumping into him in Vietnam. His dad must have paid the army to drop the height requirements. He used to pilot a Huey gunship wearing a chartreuse jumpsuit with a naked woman in silver cowboy boots on the back.”

  “What would Bonatelli be doing with a Forest Service helicopter in his yard?”

  Tribby shook his head. “Look. Let’s talk in the car. The trout must be up.”

  “Before we leave, I gotta borrow the phone.”

  Joe dialed the house, hoping that Heidi would decide these issues for him. She had flushed the cocaine down the toilet. Or, thinking it cake mix, Heather had ruined it with water and burned it up in her Easy-Bake Oven. Joe was about to hang up after eight rings when Heidi answered breathlessly. Joe said, “Listen, this morning the kids asked if I could come over and wrestle tonight, after supper.”

  “Joey,” she said plaintively, “just for the record, what are you up to? What are you doing? What’s happening with us? Don’t you think we ought to have a discussion or something to figure out where we’re at and why, and where we’re going? So that we could either separate formally or stay together or get divorced, or just do something? We need to articulate an arrangement; I can’t stand this ridiculous limbo.”

  “Well, sure, I don’t see why not.”

  “I mean, I have no idea what you think, or why you left, or why you started screwing that Reichian Pollyanna, or why—”

  “Maybe we could leave other people’s names out of our conversations,” Joe said tightly.

  “How am I supposed to refer to her then, as ‘her’? As ‘it’? As ‘she’?”

  “How about if you don’t refer to her at all?”

  “But why has all this happened in the first place if it wasn’t because you wanted to ball old whatshername? Do you want a divorce? Are you two planning a July wedding?”

  “Nobody’s getting married—Jesus!” Stop, he cried silently. I’m calling you up because I love you! I want a reconciliation!

  “Well, Joey, you’re so goddam wishy-washy. It’s like all of a sudden you decided to float around out there acting stupid—it doesn’t make any sense. Your official midlife crisis isn’t due for another six years! If you’re in love with her, I could understand. I might not like it, but at least I’d understand.”

  “Hold on a sec. Get off your high horse. For starters, three days ago you told me you didn’t want me in the house.”

  “Would you want me in your digs if I was out there screwing some cock-teasing religious fanatic who kept calling the house while you were here and asking me to come over for a roll in the old sackeroo?”

  “Do you have to be so gross?”

  “Yeah, I think maybe I do. What’s the matter, Mr. Morality here doesn’t want his eardrums tainted with crude talk? Pardon me. I’ll have to reread my Emily Post.”

  “I don’t see any point in coming over tonight if all you’re interested in is seeing how many bitch-points you can score needling me. I mean, we’re supposed to be at least semirational human beings.”

  “I’m not trying to score bitch-points. If that’s the way I sound, apologies to the pope. I’m just not accustomed to this role, that’s all. In case you’re interested, I happen to feel a bit humiliated.”

  “Well, uh, I guess I can’t blame you for that.”

  “Thanks for all your compassion. But why don’t you save yourself a lot of grief and take the compassion and shove it you know where.”

  “Heidi! All I wanted to know was could I wrestle with the kids after supper?”

  “They’re your kids, too. You don’t need permission. I’ll leave, if you want. I’ll call up Scott Harrison, see who’s available in the screwing pool, and go have myself a wonderful time doing S and M with some SOB on R and R from Doyle, Dane, Bernbrenner, Katusco, and Loblolly.”

  “Will you calm down, please? You’re getting hysterical.”

  “Actually, I’m not really hysterical.” Heidi calmed down immediately. “I’ve been doing some thinking—I know, that surprises you. But do me a favor, don’t make your usual crack, that you thought you smelled wood burning, all right? It wouldn’t sit well right now.”

  “I had no intention—”

  “Fine. Just double-checking, you know?”

  “And so?”

  “And so I’ve been thinking this whole mess is probably a very good thing. I’ve been tired of this town for a long time, I’ve wanted to return to the city. Now I have a made-in-the-shade opportunity to pull up stakes and try New York again.”

  “You what?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Yeah, but, I mean, well … shit.”

  “My sentiments exactly.”

  “But you can’t just … I mean, those are my kids, too. Hey, Heidi, what’s the matter with you anyway?”

  “You left home, Joey. You walked out, deserted us, and started fucking Miss Ethereal over there. Not a court in this country would give you custody. Not only that, but naturally we’ll have to sell the land and split the take—”

  “Sell it? We haven’t even bought it!”

  “That’s right. ‘We’ is the proper word. But now that it looks like ‘we’re’ not going to be a ‘we’ any longer, I want my half of that land, in cash. It’s not cheap to move back to the city with two young children.”

  “Wait a minute, shut up, would you? What are you talking about, moving to the city, selling the land? Five days ago you were in love with the land. We’re gonna build a house, put down roots—”

  “Things change. Five days ago you weren’t racing around town sticking your penis into every vagina that gave it a coy little wink.”

  “Heidi, you got a garbage-mouth.”

  “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

  “Oy vay, stop—all right? Listen, I’ll come over tonight, I’ll play with the kids. And after they’re in bed, we’ll talk, okay? This is absurd.”

  “Maybe I have a date tonight. I was in a bar this afternoon and I met this really super-fab-groovy Texan from Dallas who looked like a real stud. He invited me over to his pad in the Holiday Inn—”

  “Do you have to be this ugly?”

  “I don’t know … but everything I am I learned from you the last few days.”

  Joe said, “One thing I ought to make clear is if we buy the land, we can’t sell it. Not while Eloy is there. He has nowhere to go. He’s sick. If we kicked him off he’d die in forty-eight hours from a broken heart.”

  “Joey, you’ll hand that ‘poor little old man’ sixty thousand dollars in hard cash that you risked all of our lives to secure. I’m sorry, but I can’t—”

  “He’s spent his whole life on that property! He knows every weed. Every leaf and grass-blade is an extension of his soul.”

  “Four days ago you told me that as soon as we gave that old goat the heave we could start building.”

  “But that was before—”

  “No buts, mister. I want my cash. I even figured it out, in case you’re interested. Half of sixty Gs is thirty grand. But if we hang on to the place for just six months, we should be able to sell for eighty.”

  “Heidi, you’re sick. Where’s the stuff in that tea box?”

  “You mean the cocaine?”

  He shuddered. “Does everybody have to advertise it explicitly over the telephone?”

  “It’s in a safe place. Don’t worry.”

  “Don’t worry? You got a three A.M. phone call last night from a killer who threatened to kidnap Heather and drop her into the gorge, and I’m not supposed to worry?”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Tribby. He got the same ca
ll.”

  “Tribby’s untrustworthy. I love him as a friend, but I think we should cut him out. He has cold feet.”

  “My own feet are freezing! I was kidnapped by none other than Joseph Bonatelli this afternoon. He made me write my name on a grapefruit, and then he smashed it right before my eyes.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “The adventure is loco. The usual channels are closed off to us. They’ll stomp us royally if we try to unload that stuff on the open market. Ray Verboten, Skipper Nuzum, Cobey Dallas, and Joseph Bonatelli himself have already threatened my life. We’ve been blacklisted. But Tribby at least knows how to get me my money back, and that option’s the only one makes any sense.”

  “You want to sell it for twelve thousand dollars?” Heidi shrieked.

  “Believe me, at that price right now it’s a bargain. Heidi, they mean it when they talk about dropping Heather into the gorge!”

  “Over my dead body.”

  “Precisely. Now listen—where is that box?”

  “I know where it is, and it’s none of your business. If you’re so chicken, I’ll handle it.”

  “You’ll what?” Who had she metamorphosed into overnight, Alice Capone? “Heidi, it’s not worth it, honest. I would rather you flushed the coke down the toilet, really. The longer that junk is in our possession, the sooner something horrible could happen. Suppose they broke Michael’s back? Or threw a hand grenade!”

  “You and your imagination! It got us into this, and now all you can do is whimper and order me to flush twelve thousand dollars down the toilet. Well, let me tell you something, Joey. If this is a trick, I’m not buying it. You can’t fool me anymore. If we’re going to be divorced, I want my thirty Gs. No male chauvinist pig is screwing me out of that. I want mine. Then we’ll be even steven and you can proceed with your amorous lunacies without any more interference from these quarters.”

  “I hate to say this, Heidi, but you’re giving me the creeps.”

  “You are a creep, Joey.”

  “I’m gonna hang up now, I feel sick.”

  “Welcome to the club.”

  “But, it’s just that you sound like … I mean … God. Like Zsa Zsa Gabor.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? Another of your coy, cloying, meaningless allusions that are supposed to make people believe you’re actually much cleverer than they might at first glance suspect?”

  “Zsa Zsa Gabor, lame-brain! She’s always getting divorced and cleaning up in the settlements—get it?”

  “No need to shout.”

  “What are you trying to do, rape me? Destroy everything? Kill our kids? Right before my eyes you’re turning into every ugly, vicious, capitalist greedy cliché in the book!”

  “I’m turning into?”

  “Just because I was confused and screwed a person I don’t give a damn for doesn’t mean you have to turn into some kind of bloodsucking John D. Rockefeller in a skirt.”

  “You needn’t denigrate her,” Heidi said with diabolical tranquillity. “She’s a human being too, you know. And also a woman. Who, no doubt, like all the rest of us, has been trashed since time immemorial by zhlubs like you who just like to find ’em, feel ’em, fuck ’em, and then forget ’em.”

  “Whoa!—did you just defend her?”

  “Well how do you think she feels?” Heidi bleated. “Lord knows why but she may have honest loving feelings toward you, and you mock her behind her back. You treat her like dirt. She has a vulnerable impressionable child who would probably like a daddy. But instead you enter their lives—this cold-blooded Fascist who deserts one family in order to viciously exploit another. Then for the frosting on your Nazi cake, you send Michael over to assassinate their monkey. Naturally, I feel sorry for them. And, incidentally, your callousness makes me upchuck.”

  “‘Callous’? When have I ever—”

  “Let’s drop the subject, okay? Finito. Kaput. I’m not interested.”

  “You can’t just accuse me of all those horrors and then tell me to drop the subject.”

  “Can’t I?” Her increasingly arctic tone made him shiver. Out of his league in this thing, he was obviously going to have his head, not to mention his balls, handed to him on a platter before he could cry “uncle!” And not just by Heidi, but by Nancy and by Diana also—all three of them at once, in fact. Not to mention what Ray Verboten and Joseph Bonatelli and their ilk had in store. Joe pictured himself a week hence, parked on the mesa in the Green Gorilla, a pistol in his lap, adding the final touches to a will before planting a bullet in his befuddled noggin. Heidi would have departed by then, having scored the coke on her own for a hundred thousand clams, absconding with his kids and all of his cash equity. Citing his spiritual bankruptcy as an excuse, Nancy would have deserted him for good. Diana would have left because he refused to beat her up. Completing the rout, having successfully robbed the First State People’s Jug, Eloy Irribarren wouldn’t even allow Joe onto his sanctified terrain to say adios to Wolfie.

  Tribby pointed anxiously to his watch. “It’s almost five o’clock. The trout should be hitting.”

  Joe covered the mouthpiece. “Trout? I’m talking to a lunatic, and you’re concerned about trout?”

  Tribby displayed all his snaggleteeth in a lopsided grin. “The trout will only be hitting for two hours. The lunatics go on forever.”

  Heidi asked, “Who are you talking to?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Why did you muffle the mouthpiece? I could hear your palm squudged against it. You’re calling from her house, aren’t you? I don’t believe it. You’re incredible. You know what you remind me of? One of those Nazi doctors who got great glee out of experimenting on people and watching them suffer. Really, Joey, I’m dumbstruck.”

  Joe said, “For your personal information and edification, I’d like you to know that I happen to be in Tribby’s law office, in case you’re interested.”

  “Bullshit. You lie like a flounder.”

  He was on a grammar-school playground again, playing the dozens!

  “I believe the proper expression is ‘lie like a hound.’”

  “God, you’re funny. If you’re in Tribby’s office, which I doubt, put him on.”

  Joe handed the phone to Tribby: he contemplated it as if it were made of molded dog-turds. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

  “Talk to her. Say hello. Give her your name, your rank, your serial number.”

  “I’m a shyster, man, not a marriage counselor.”

  “Just for God’s sake say hello, will you please?”

  “It’s all right,” screamed a teeny voice issuing from the mouthpiece. “I can hear him! I believe you! Joey? Joey!”

  “That’ll teach you to accuse me of lying,” he crowed.

  “Well, I can’t trust you anymore. You’ve turned into some kind of a frigging Bluebeard.”

  “Believe it or not, I’m not having so damn much fun out here, ravishing all these beautiful maidens.”

  “Oh gee, tough beans. I’m crying crocodile tears.”

  “I bet you are. I bet you just sit there, managing the lousy switchboard, gloating over all the field reports coming in to your flapping little ears concerning my clumsy adventures and imminent demise.”

  “Ha ha. Joey? I’m sitting here in rubble. I’m sitting here in a rain of ashes trying to figure out if I’m supposed to go fishing or cut bait. I asked Adele Flannigan what to do, and she said ‘Lock him out, throw away the key, hire a good lawyer, get all his money.’ I asked Suki what to do, and she said ‘What can you do? The grass isn’t any greener elsewhere, only different. Try and work it out.’ I asked Sally what to do and she asked me back what did I want to do? I said I didn’t know, I couldn’t think of any options that made sense. So she said ‘Fight fire with fire. Go out and have an affair and he’ll come crawling home, slavering jealousy and contriteness from his lips like rabid dog foam.’ But there’s something I really don’t understand.”

  �
�And it is…?”

  “Everybody makes it sound as if having an affair is like going to the store for a loaf of bread. But I think they’re nuts. I look at men right now, they make me sick. Sometimes, out of the blue, I even feel like slugging Michael for no other reason than that he’s a man.”

  “He’s a little boy, Heidi. And if you even lay a finger on him, so help me God—”

  “Stop it, Joey! Good Lord, I’m not going to hit him!”

  “Well, what are you doing even going around thinking that kind of thought?”

  “He’s a male. He’s got a dork. He even has some of your mannerisms. Someday he’ll grow up and be a man and start leaving footprints on the women he’s trompled. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with hating him for that.”

  Joe said, “We’re not getting anywhere. I’m gonna hang up. But I can assume, can’t I, that it’s okay to come over tonight?”

  “Trout,” Tribby whispered urgently, pointing at his watch. “This can wait, the trout can’t. I haven’t been fishing in a month. All day I looked forward to right now.”

  “What’s Tribby saying?”

  “Nothing important. Look, do everybody a favor, Tribby, and shut up, huh? I’ll be off in a minute.”

  “One minute.”

  “I’ll be off, all right? Don’t get a hernia.”

  “He said ‘trout,’ didn’t he?” Heidi’s voice slid back into a dangerous register. “I did hear correctly. That’s exactly what he said.”

  “I’ve got no idea what he said. I wasn’t listening.”

  “The two of you are going trout fishing, aren’t you? Really, Joey, you’re fantastic. Right before my very eyes you’re turning into a goddam Martian. I don’t even know you anymore. It’s like your chest opened up, your … your breasts swung open like a couple of saloon doors, and your heart fell out, dressed in black, wearing double six-guns and a Jack Palance mask.”

  “Are you on a drug? Are you drinking?”