by John Nichols
Heather asks if you’ll ever write us a letter, and I told her “Oh sure,” you’d probably drop us a postcard or two every year.
I’m moving back to New York next Thursday. I can take neither the midnight phone calls from bloodthirsty gangsters, nor your humiliation of me. We should probably meet to discuss finances sometime before then, though it’s no big deal. We can iron out the details through my lawyer, Scott Harrison.
Cheerio, pip pip, and all that sort of tommyrot—
Heidi
P.S. What’s this I hear about you hijacking a helicopter?
Not to be an alarmist, but things had begun to look bleak. And, even before unfolding Iréné’s note, he imagined exactly what it would say:
Hey there, stud,
Thanks for the duh-vine lay. You sure know how to do a girl up brown.
OOOOOOOOXXXXXXXXX,
Iréné
Instead, she surprised him.
Hi,
Don’t forget the pre-Hanuman party tonight.
Iréné
Maybe he should thank God for small favors.
In the meantime, where to go? What to do? To say he had lost the thread was a humongous understatement. How he had lost it so totally, so vertiginously, defied comprehension. All that remained to finalize his downfall now, should he miraculously escape the wrath of Ray Verboten, et al., were a few fifty-five-gallon drums of cheap dago red, consumed in four-quart quantities daily behind Rick Bomb’s Liquor Store over a fourteen-month period. If anything remained after that, then the forces overseeing humanity’s annihilation were even crueler than he had surmised.
For the umpteen-billionth time, the car wouldn’t start!
Joe leaped to the ground, spread his legs like Charlton Heston posing defiantly in front of the heroic craggy letters of Ben-Hur, uplifted his arms to the glorious blue expanse crowning his many moods, and howled: “Why me, God?”
A hundred tiny yellow warblers popped out of Eloy’s fruit trees. They joined momentarily, an airborne golden globe above the orchard, then broke apart, scattering their lemony, tear-shaped bodies to the four winds.
Though enraged, Joe nevertheless doubled up laughing at the ludicrous figure he must have cut, gesturing at the sky, leading the droll life he led. Would it never end? Forgetting about his own drama, would there ever be Peace on Earth? Would there ever be a single day for just lolling around in the moss atop a plump pink maiden, listening to nightingales and guzzling Lowenbrau, while fauns grazed among lilies of the valley, and apples glittered like Christmas-tree baubles…?
* * *
ON HIS WAY out the driveway, Joe almost banged head on against Tribby’s battered Volvo skidding in. “Hey!” the lawyer cried jubilantly, leaping from his car into the cloud of dust that eddied around their two vehicles. “Where are you going in such a hurry, my good friend?”
“Crazy. You wanna come along?”
“Tut tut. Don’t be bitter, now.”
“What are you doing over here—you jumped your keeper at feeding-time and escaped?”
Tribby assumed a kidding pontificating posture: “I’ve come, said the wise old man, to assess the situation.”
“Well, there it is.” Joe indicated the festival preparations with a sweep of his hand.
Tribby squinted, then slapped his thigh. “Hot dawg! Not only are they offering us a million free dollars, but to boot it’s packaged to go. Look at that cable on the U-Haul.”
Joe said, “Hey, man. Seriously, for a minute. I’ve been thinking.…”
Tribby turned on him. “No no, cut the shit. Nobody’s paying you to think!”
“I’m tired,” Joe whined. “I don’t want to be rich. I’ve given up on the land. To hell with the dope. And especially screw your helicopter escapade. It’s all fantasies. It’s not worth it.”
His chum’s face fell. “I thought you wanted this land. You already risked your life for it.”
“I did. I still do. But it’s impossible. I can’t compete. I don’t want to compete, either. The game is too rough. I’ve already lost everything that was precious to me, and what have I received in return?”
“Passion,” Tribby said excitedly, running his hand through his flowing white hair. “My God, doesn’t the thought of buzzing down from the sky and snatching that thing get your thermometer rising?”
“It makes my bones clench and my asshole ache.”
“There you go!”
“No. Those are horrendous feelings.”
“It’ll be … it’ll be…” Tribby flapped his hands, searching for a hyperbole, a metaphor, an exclamation. “It’ll be the crime of the century. We’ll bamboozle the Hanumans, flimflam the Mafia, cheat all the nasty banks and all the corrupt lawyers!”
“You’re not thinking ahead,” Joe said meticulously. “We might get caught. They’ll punish us worse than for the dope. And even if the authorities somehow can’t follow the two billion clues we’ve given to their logical conclusions, the underworld will know who did it. And next time Bonatelli will squash my face instead of a grapefruit. Tribby, it’s time to wake up. These monkey-and-gangster games are insane.”
“Wait a minute. Before you knock it, listen to how simple the gig is gonna be. I mean seriously, it’s like a plan sculpted by Michelangelo.”
Joe shook his head. “No, no, no—you’re not hearing me. The whole caper is like a bad movie. It has nothing to do with the real world, real life, real anything.”
“Ralph is gonna remove the fly boxes from both the copters. So then if Ephraim Bonatelli and Ray Verboten try and beat us to the punch, they won’t have a leg to stand on!”
Joe said, “My wife hates me, my kids hate me, and you’ve gone crazy! It ain’t worth it!”
“Hey, calm down, bro.” Tribby grabbed Joe’s shoulders and rattled them. “Don’t shout.”
“I can’t help it,” Joe sobbed. “I’m not cut out for this line of work. All I ever wanted in life—”
“Hush, hush, calm down, easy boy. Listen, it’s a piece of cake. Trust me, trust me.” He pinched Joe’s chin, forcing him to look into his eyes. “Trust me, partner. Just trust me. Okay? You got that now? Just trust me. I know what I’m doing.”
Joe said, “There’s a goddam angel walking around this town.”
“What?”
“There’s an angel walking around this town. I think it’s the Angel of Death. He wants to kill me.”
“Joe?” Tribby blanched. “Joe, for Christ’s sake, look at me. What the hell are you on? What have you been taking?”
“I’m not kidding. There was a feather in the phone booth. Sanji Smatterling saw him there. Then I woke up this morning, and he was sitting in a chair, staring at me. We had a fight. Then I shot Diana’s pistol at him.”
“Oh shit,” Tribby groaned. “You’ve flipped.”
“I’m serious. He’s six feet tall, maybe even bigger. He’s got a beard. And wings. And a real halo.”
Tribby let go his shoulders, backing up a step, aghast. “What are you on, man, psilocybin? LSD? Did somebody slip you a quiff of those cutworm moths soaked in PCP?”
“I don’t even smoke dope. I’m telling you, he’s real.”
“Real?” Tribby banged his head. “I shoulda known you would crack. You frigging preppies can’t stand the pressure. Christ man, we’re so close, you can’t fall apart. Please. I beg of you. I can hand you this land on a silver platter, if you’ll only just keep it together.”
“I can’t anymore. I’m just a humble everyday working shmuck. All I ever wanted in life was—”
“No,” Tribby said vehemently, “I’m not gonna let you do it. You set all of this in motion.”
“Me and the guy who offed whatshisname, the Archduke Ferdinand at Sarajevo.”
“But you’re missing a very important point.”
“Which is?”
“If you let them take it away from you, and away from your kids, and away from Eloy Irribarren, why then you’re nothing better than just another patsy
. You’re the one who always used to lecture me on how important it was to seize the day. You’re the one who always used to tell me that individuals can make a difference on historical scales. You’re the one who’s always telling me that we can affect our own destinies. You’re the Communist Christer who always told me that each and every one of us has a moral imperative to halt progress, American-style. You’re the son of a bitch who always claimed it was more important to die like a man on your feet than to live like a slave on your knees.”
“But it’s too difficult. They own all the horses. And anyway, what’s the point of struggling for justice by selling dope or kidnapping granite monkeys? The means don’t justify the end.”
“Well, I refuse to let them do it to you,” Tribby said quietly. “You may want them to steamroller your marshmallow hide, but not me. I say enough is enough. They deserve a run for their money. I’m mad, José, and I aim to do something about it.”
Morosely, Joe said, “We’ll all of us lose in the end. It can’t succeed.”
“Says you. Mr. Defeatist personified.” He kicked at a pebble. “I never thought I’d see the day.”
“Oh hell,” Joe whimpered, “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? Don’t hand me that liberal apologia trip.”
Weakly, Joe tried to defend himself. “It’s not liberal apologia. It’s just that—”
“Say no more, I get the drift.”
“But you don’t understand.…”
“I understand, all right. They appeased Hitler, and look what happened.” He retreated toward his Volvo.
“This has nothing to do with Hitler.…”
“Oh yeah? Who does Bonatelli represent? Who does Ray Verboten represent? Who does Nikita Smatterling represent?”
“I know, but—”
“No buts. I’m in this to the very end. And so is Ralph. We finally figured out a way to salvage your ass, and you come up with the screaming meemies. Some thanks.”
Joe staggered over to the driverside of the automobile as Tribby slouched behind the wheel. “It’s just that I’ve lost the thread,” Joe pleaded. “I can’t seem to do anything right. When I first spoke with Peter about scoring that crude dope, I thought it would be all so simple. But the situation keeps deteriorating. People attack me, they ridicule me, they want my body, they want my soul. I don’t understand how everything could go so wrong. Can’t you sympathize?”
“I got only a handful of hours to pull off one of the most daring heists in American history, and you want me to hold your hand?”
“Forget my hand. But you could make an attempt to understand my point of view.”
“I understand,” Tribby said quietly. “It’s the point of view of a fifty-year-old, alcoholic, potbellied turkey who every day reads The New York Times on the five seventeen into Scarsdale, and has a bunch of clandestine Playboy magazines secreted in his den closet to beat off by while he dreams of diddling nubile starlets and writing letters of congratulations to Che Guevara.”
“No. Wait a minute. I’m not like that.…”
Tribby slammed it into reverse, and peeled backward out of the drive way. His “Oh yes you are” ricocheting back among the pebbles stung Joe like a savage hornet.
“Wait!” he cried.
But his pal, a man of action in a world that moved too fast for the likes of Joe Miniver, was tearing off along the bumpy road, twisting a screeching Destiny by her slippery, sinuous tail. And Joe ate the dust.
* * *
NEVERTHELESS, LATER, tooling down the highway, his knees went weak with relief. “I’m no longer a player,” he said aloud. “I’m tapped out of the game.”
He had the distinct sensation—and he welcomed it—that his strange odyssey had almost ended. For one thing, he couldn’t take the pace. For another, ultimately his priorities lay elsewhere. Lessons he had painfully learned these past few days he would never forget. What he and Heidi shared was precious almost to the point of being sacred. During the last few years a sloppiness had wrangled into the marriage, but this traumatic upheaval would awaken them both, cementing the family more strongly together. First thing next week he planned to break out the tattered copy of The Art of Loving they both had read so long ago. And he could do it, Joe knew, because deep down he was a long-distance runner, with principles, morals, compassionate sensibilities. Neither he nor Heidi, nor the children, were lightweights. How absurd to flounder into the dope- and guru-riddled carnival of middle-class anarchism in Chamisaville. None of them was even remotely that superficial.
Worn-out, pensive, and conciliatory, relaxing as he began to glow with benevolent feelings, Joe reread Heidi’s note … and discovered that the vicious little epistle was hard to take with a grain of salt.
For starters, he had not been doing what she thought he was doing when she so snidely slipped it under his windshield wiper. Plus it was Heidi, essentially, who had driven him into exile after his initial slipup, thus forcing him to consolidate a sexual liaison he’d had no intention of consummating beyond that initial Saturday night. And what about the way she was now working overtime to poison the kids against him? Take for example the term fornication sweepstakes. Or: How nasty could you get, telling the kids their father might drop them “a postcard or two” every year?
Finally, where did that snotty bitch get off, threatening him with the legal expertise of a sexist creep like Scott Harrison? How could she pay the slick buzzard—by spreading her legs for bottlecaps? By paying his outrageous fees in pudendum, pussy, and pap? Or by lying that she’d destroyed the cocaine, and then unloading it on the side? If he got to Heidi before the Verboten-Bonatelli thugs, he’d do the coke kingpin’s job on her for them!
Wow. Where did it come from, such a blithering, prejudiced, and yet alarmingly heartfelt, venom?
Barely sixty seconds ago, the Peace-Love-Groovy Kid had drawn his double six-guns and shot flowers into the cosmic domain of Tranquillity, Concern, and Caring. Now, suddenly, decked in black, he was firing dumdums at all those helpless, warm, and soft rabbits hopping about the greensward of Familial Experience.
Time to apply the brakes—to himself, not the bus—but in this he failed miserably. Completely disregarding his good intentions, totally ignoring the fact that he’d been a loyal husband and devoted father for a decade, his wife, Heidi Medea, would stop at nothing to poison the kids against their Daddy!
The accumulating fury soon boiled over. By the time he neared the Castle of Golden Fools, a wicked froth bubbled between his lips. After a fifth reading of Heidi’s note, Joe concluded that the only way to handle her was with an ax. Or by kidnapping the kids.
He would abduct the only two human beings he truly loved before her poisonous fangs had sucked all their rational blood, transforming them into miniature hate-filled ogres greedy for dollars, property, and power!
* * *
AS LUCK WOULD HAVE IT, Heidi was gone when he entered the apartment in Tribby Gordon’s infamous digs. Both kids were home, though, in the middle of a jigsaw derby.
Twice a year they hauled out every puzzle they owned, and initiated a marathon of jigsaw construction usually lasting the better part of a week. Or until the living-room floor became carpeted with the mosaics, and all family members had cramped calves from tiptoeing around the completed works of banal art. Some puzzles were so familiar they could do them in minutes. In fact, they often competed to see who could do a puzzle faster. Last Christmas Michael had received a stopwatch. Awed, Joe had watched them time each other doing a hundred-piece exercise in under five minutes. Their destinies, obviously, lay as genius physicists or inmate extras in the Titicut Follies. What else could you say about a little boy shrieking off stopwatch seconds as his kid sister raced to complete a puzzle faster than her brother had done it minutes earlier, with a quarter of her dollar allowance at stake?
Joe said, “All right, let’s go, fetch the suitcases from the closet and pack all your clothes, we’re getting out of here.”
“No we’re not,” He
ather said calmly. “We’re doing puzzles.”
“Screw the puzzles.” Joe towered menacingly over them. “Where’s Heidi?”
“We don’t know.”
“How can you not know? She didn’t leave a note where she was going?”
“She was gone when we got home.” Heather fitted a piece into Snoopy’s nose.
“I can’t believe she would split without giving you kids a number. I mean, suppose there was an emergency?”
“Aw, you don’t have to make a federal case out of it.” Heather added, “Come on, Daddy, be quiet. We hafta concentrate.”
“Maybe you didn’t hear me. I said find the suitcases and pack all your clothes, we’re getting out of here.”
Michael looked up. “Where are we going?”
“I don’t know. But I’ve had it with this stupid town.”
Heather asked, “Is Mommy coming?”
“No. I’m sick and tired of her, too.”
“Then I’m not going.”
Michael said, “Me neither.”
“Wait a minute. I don’t think you kids understand. I’m not asking you twerps if you want to go with me, I’m ordering you to pack your bags and tag along.”
Heather said, “You can’t make us if we don’t want to.”
“Heather, if you don’t shut up and hop to it by the time I count to three, I’ll yank your pants down and give you a hundred whacks on a bare fanny.”
“I don’t care.”
“This time I wouldn’t be kidding around, I assure you. And believe me, it would hurt.”
Michael looked uneasy. “If we go with you, does that mean I’ll have to go to a different school?”
“Well, no … I mean, sure … uh, you know—I don’t know. It depends on where we wind up. But probably—well, sure. I mean, I’m not going to hang around this town—”
“Then I’m not going. I don’t wanna leave my school.”
“Whaddayou mean, you don’t want to leave it? Yesterday a bunch of creeps hunted you down and busted your nose in cold blood.”
“I don’t care,” he said defiantly, finishing off one of King Kong’s ears, “I don’t want to go to a different school right in the middle of the year.”