by John Nichols
“Out! Get out of here!”
“It’s cold out there.”
“Out, buster, before I call the cops!”
“It was a stupid gesture. I’m sorry I scared you. I scared myself. I’m gonna vomit.”
“Just get out, Joey, I’m warning you.”
“But where will I go?”
“Go to hell. Now come on—adiós! If I have to look at you for ten more seconds—”
She slapped his face and tugged him into a sitting position.
“Hey, take it easy. Christ, I’m going.”
“Not fast enough to suit me. On your feet—alley ooop!” She actually heaved him upright. He staggered, dropping the gun. Heidi stooped, picked it up, and handed it over. “Take this, let’s go.”
“I don’t want it. I’m gonna upchuck.”
“I don’t want it either. You carry it for protection in your helicopter.”
“Heidi, I’m really going to blow my lunch!”
“So barf already! Need I draw a map to the bathroom?”
Hands clapped over his mouth, Joe lumbered across the living room, plunged into the can, and sank whimpering to his knees, tears already galloping from his eyes as his stomach’s contents lurched northward. Terror had always accompanied his throw-ups. Heidi barely flinched when nausea struck: at the first queasy pangs she stuck a finger down her throat and regurgitated the poison in a matter-of-fact manner. But Joe would suffer a rocky stomach for days in order to postpone, or even avoid entirely, the horrible moment of truth.
Currently, however, he had zero choice. In no uncertain terms he vomited, punctuating the painful heaves with agonized watery sobs. Inside a minute, having coughed up the very dregs of his guts, Joe rocked back, resting on his heels, bleary-eyed and thoroughly frazzled.
Heidi occupied the doorway. “That’s it? You through? Because if you’re entirely finished—”
“I’m done. Christ, woman, have a heart. I’ll just take this for a souvenir.” So saying, he reached into the wastebasket for that empty tea carton.
Empty? Joe gripped it lightly, thinking it weightless, but the carton slipped from his grasp, striking the tiles with a heavy chunk!
For a second, nothing registered. Then, befuddled, he grasped the box again. “Hey … this thing’s heavy.” Fumbling weakly, Joe pried open a flap, discovering what he should have known all along—the carton positively groaned with uncut cocaine!
“Holy mackerel. Heidi…?”
But she had turned and commenced walking away.
“This box is full!” he called after her. “You didn’t flush it down the toilet!”
“Fuck you, Joey. I’ve had it, I mean it.”
“You’ve had it?” He jumped to his feet. “You lied to me, Heidi! You said you flushed it down the toilet!”
“You lied to me about Nancy Ryan. In the last five days you’ve become the most shiftless monster I ever met!”
“Oh no, hold on just a minute, here. This is different. We’re talking about a hundred Gs, here.” Joe advanced menacingly across the living room, shaking the box at her. “We’re talking about Eloy’s property, and his future well-being, and the future of ourselves and our children. We’re talking about goods that people are prepared to kill to obtain, and you lied to me, Heidi!”
“Don’t be self-righteous, Joey. Under the circumstances that would be very unbecoming.”
“‘Unbecoming’?” Instant apoplexy! Veins bulged, ears blazed, Joe’s heart trumpeted against his sternum. “I don’t believe you can stand there with that pinched, twitty smirk on your face putting me down, after trying to launch a caper like that! What were you gonna do, give it to Scott Harrison for reaming me? Abscond to New York and make a killing in secret? You son of a bitch!” His arms flailed, his hair stood on end. “You would double-cross me like that? What happened, you made a deal under the table with Ray Verboten? Did Nikita Smatterling seduce you into turning it over to Skipper Nuzum? I don’t believe it! Everyone of those assholes tried to make me double-cross you and Eloy and Tribby and anybody else in the valley with even a smidgin of decency left, but I told them to walk! You scumbag! The junk in this little box could send our kids to college! It could pay all your hospital bills if you ever got cancer! It could give us a little bit of security in this goddam shark-infested country! It could … it could…”
All the while he ranted, she had stared at him frozenly, her arms folded, her eyes absolute slits, her face arctic. Now, as he sputtered off incoherently, she said, “My my, would you look at the Fascist rising up out of the Communist rhetoric.”
Joe hit her with all his might. A right-hand cross that bounced off her left temple. He screamed “Ouch!” as Heidi capsized sideways, tripping over the coffee table in a watery explosion of sea monkeys—her right arm, in the cast, swung into the TV set, smashing the picture tube with a scary hollow pop! Glass sprayed across her body as she bounced to earth.
Joe cried, “Oh no!”
Heather shrieked.
Michael stared disbelievingly, his mouth awkwardly open, palms cupped over his ears.
“My hand!” Joe howled. “You broke my hand!” He doubled over as pain leaped splinteringly, like haywire needles, up his arm and tried to break his neck. Through a screen of sputtering freckles before his eyes that forewarned fainting, Joe saw Heidi flop over on all fours and start scrambling like a terrified crab through the carnage toward the telephone: a red haze seemed to spray off her shocked and stormy features. At the same instant, Heather flew through the air as if propelled by a mammoth slingshot: she crunched into his belly, fists flailing, and knocked him head over teakettle. Enraged, Joe flung her aside and hollered at Heidi as she fumbled with the phone: “What are you doing?”
“I’m calling the police! You better get out of here!”
“Call the police and I’ll kill you!”
“No you won’t, Daddy, I’ll kill you!” Volume J-K of the World Book Encyclopedia thumped against Joe’s cranium, catching his tongue directly between his teeth and driving his head halfway to China.
Joe elbowed his whirlwind daughter aside and bolted toward Heidi. “You call the cops and they’ll find the cocaine! We’ll all go to jail!”
She warded him off, viciously swinging the cast: it caught him in the shoulder, shunting his charge sideways. Her eyes bugged out of a face smeared in red. Rent across the chest, her blouse was ruined. Joe belly-flopped, clutching the coke box to his ribs like a good tailback. Immediately, he rolled, grasping for Heidi with his free hand. She kicked at his face, meaning to maim; at the same time her fingers scrabbled to register a single digit: “Operator! This is an emergency!”
Joe cried, “Wait a minute, I’m leaving!” Heather crashed into his back, grabbing hair, ears, shoulders; her knees frantically drubbed his kidneys. “This is crazy!” Joe dumped his daughter brusquely on her ass again. They looked like a scene from the cover of Police Gazette. Eighty percent of all American murders occurred within families, among lovers and estranged spouses.
“Operator, I want the police!”
“I’m going, Heidi! Shit, please don’t—” Staggering erect, Joe stumbled toward freedom. The empty fishbowl, pitched by Heather, ricocheted off his rump, knocking him off-balance again: he pitched over the arm of the easy chair.
Michael remained paralyzed, hands covering his ears, mouth wide open.
“I didn’t want this to happen!” Joe bawled, as Heather, a miniature wounded rhino, charged again.
“Hello, police? This is an emergency. I live on Ranchitos Road … Castle of Golden Fools … a big, dumb, two-story mansion by the S-curve. A man is going amok … he tried to kill me.…”
Next time around, Heather drove straight for his balls: one fist caught him there. Reacting to the pain, Joe boxed her ears—she cartwheeled into the bookcase: crash!
Joe stammered and gestured pathetically: if only he could retract this mayhem. Jumping up from the phone, Heidi grabbed the nearest weapon, an oversized red Wiffle
Ball bat; even her teeth were soaked in blood.
“You’re a lunatic, Joey! Be gone!”
“But I didn’t mean…”
Here came Heather again, the Floyd Patterson of the kiddy pugilists, up off the floor for the umpteenth time.
“Out, you bastard!”
“Not like this—oof!” Tiny teeth sank into his forearm and held on, mongoose-fanatical: boneless and floppy, Heather twitched like a rag doll in a hurricane as Joe tried to shake her loose.
Wielding the Wiffle Ball bat like an expert, Heidi caught him broadside with a home-run swing. Stars appeared; Joe’s ears popped and clanged; and he realized that if they prolonged this rumble, a death might truly be the outcome. Gasping, Joe located the doorknob and toppled over backward outside, landing on the deck.
“I’m going,” he gurgled. “I give up!”
“Not fast enough!” Heidi croaked. The bat drummed against his forearms, head, and shoulders.
Using every last bit of strength, Joe humped onto the ladder, lost his footing, and clung one-handed to a rung. Heidi bounced a final blow off his head, placed her foot against the top rung, and kicked outward. Joe screeched, letting go, and experienced a briefly euphoric free fall before crunching to earth: the ladder jounced off his thighs, underscoring—emphatically—the fact that their marriage was over.
“I hate you, Daddy!” came from over the parapets above. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!”
“Come near us again and you’re dead!” Heidi threatened. “I’ll obtain an injunction! I’ll have bodyguards from Women Against Rape!”
What next—boiling oil? The cops! She had called them, they must be on their way. Astonished, Joe found himself still clutching the tea box. Apparently, nothing except his spirit was broken. Frantically, then, he clawed free of the ladder.
“I love my children!” he sobbed.
“The police are coming!”
“Good-bye, Michael!” Joe wailed up at the blank apartment walls. “I love you, Heather! I’m sorry!” Would his son be catatonic from now until eternity, instantly transformed into an autistic zombie, forever captured in that sitting position, horrified eyes and mouth wide open, hands clapped over his ears to ward off the obscenity of his parents’ final explosion?
Heather and Heidi disappeared: the door slammed: from here on in it was a whole new ball game.
* * *
FROM HIS FLOTATION tank, Ralph said, “What’s all the commotion, Miniver? Your sexual chickens coming home to roost, you lecherous rascal you?”
“What would you know about sexual chickens coming home to roost?” Ralph was supine in his Sensu-Casket beside a female body.
“C’mere,” the plump man said. “I need to talk to you.”
“It’s all over, Ralph,” Joe whimpered. “Heidi lied to me about flushing the dope down the toilet. She tried to double-cross me. We had a fight. I almost killed her. We actually came to blows. Heather tried to kill me. Michael is up there struck dumb with shock. The cops are coming.”
The woman beside Ralph had a hefty bosom. A gold star glittered against her forehead. She wore tiny, black-rimmed goggles, such as competitive swimmers use. Her hands were protected from the brine by rubber gloves. Ralph balanced a mauve jar, into which a burning incense stick was stabbed, atop his watermelon-sized belly.
“Forget about the dope,” Ralph soothed pleasantly. He was obviously stoned. “Not to worry, old sport. The Hanuman caper will net ten times the score. I want you to meet Sahdreeni.”
“Sahdreeni?”
“It’s a derivation of a Sanskrit dialect meaning ‘holy songbird,’” the chipper girl explained. “I changed it to that last year after my car accident.”
“Sahdreeni who?”
“Just Sahdreeni, that makes it pure.”
“Where are you from?” he droned lifelessly.
“I’m a citizen of the conscious universe. Everyplace is my home.”
“What was your name before you changed it?” Joe nattered stupidly, wishing to run, and yet held spellbound by this prosaic exchange.
“Laurie Feldencropper.”
“Her grandparents were Lithuanian cabinetmakers,” Ralph explained.
Joe said, “What do you do for a living?”
“I’m an astral cartographer.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“I make maps for people to follow when they travel.”
“You mean like Triple-A? How to get to Boston from Cundy’s Harbor, Maine?”
Sahdreeni giggled. “No, silly. I help guide people who are into soul travel.”
“Ahhhh…” Joe nodded wisely. One ear twitched, listening for sirens.
Ralph said, “She’s looking for a house to rent, if you hear of any good places cheap.”
“Listen, Ralph, excuse me but I gotta go. I’m right in the middle of having a sort of nervous breakdown.”
“We’ll be out of the tank in about twenty minutes if you want to use it.”
“No thanks. I’ll see you.…”
“At the party later on, bro. You’re going, of course? Ray Verboten won’t dare kick ass in front of all those aristocratic honkies.”
Joe’s vision, as once again he aimed the decrepit bus out of the Castle’s driveway, was so blurred from tears that he almost hit a tank truck entering the yard, and could barely read the logo on its rounded, rusty flanks: VALLEY SEPTIC—YOUR SHIT MAKES US RICH. In the front seat sat two men in those same rubber suits. The passenger wore a snorkel and a diving mask, and the driver was disguised in one of those ubiquitous and grotesque gorilla faces.
* * *
WHEN HAD HE last inserted something edible into his body? Suddenly ravenous, Joe decided to hit the Prince of Whales for a bite. If he ate something, maybe at least his body would survive. But then what—the Nuzums’ party? He couldn’t think. Now he was totally, hopelessly adrift. He squeezed the tea box in his crotch, between his thighs. What to do next? Pin it to his chest as a target for their high-powered rifle slugs? “I’ve lost the will to care anymore.” They’d be doing him a favor to end his blithering existence. Beyond all else he intently desired a respite from his own ridiculous drama.
Yet by the time he parked on the plaza, Joe had sucked a last few drops of stubborn resistance from the pool of his ramshackle survival instincts: he took the box of cartridges from the glove compartment, and, after fitting six bullets into Diana’s gun, queasily returned the pistol to his pocket. Then, cradling his cocaine football in the crook of one arm, Joe crossed the relatively deserted plaza to the relatively empty café.
Relatively being a relative term, of course. As soon as he walked through the door, almost heady from anticipating a cup of hot coffee, Joe realized that the only other person there besides Darlene was Diana.
At a corner table by the jukebox she sat, death warmed over. Bedraggled, scraggled, and lovelorn, she nursed a cup of caffeine as if it was the only thing between her and a messy suicide.
What to do—nonchalantly plunk himself elsewhere, ignoring her? No way. Their eyes met: immediately, she looked down and away. Joe inhaled deeply, shuddered, wiped a tear from his eye, approached her table, and, laying a tentatively proprietory hand on an empty chairback, he asked, “May I?”
“May you what?”
“Sit down here. I’m very tired.”
“It’s a free country.”
“I won’t if you don’t want me to.”
“I can’t stop you, can I?”
“Listen, if you don’t want to talk, I can understand.”
“Oh yeah?” Her eyes flashed fire. “Then you’d be the first man I ever met who could understand anything beyond the parameters of his own cock.”
“Look, I’m sorry. I came over because I figured it would be pretty insulting if I didn’t.” He wanted to add: Please, Diana, don’t hurt me, I feel so fragile. I’m tired of being at war. I’m scared stiff. I don’t want to molest you. I’m so confused. I need somebody right at this crucial moment in
my deteriorating existence.
She was sublimely hostile: “Well, now you know.”
“What?”
“That it’s more insulting that you did.”
“Hey, Diana—”
“Hay is for horses, straw is cheaper, you can get grass free.”
Joe said “Glurg,” shrugged miserably, and placed his coke box on the table before him. Light-headed, ears buzzing, he swallowed hard: “I’m sorry.”
“Take your sorrow and shove it.”
“I … but … isn’t there any way…?” Please, Diana, lighten up, tender at least a partial forgiveness. He needed to touch her, be held, make a connection, feel some kind of—any kind of—love.
“Look, Joe. You already got what you want from me, so why not split? Go find another dummy with big tits and a tight cunt. Christ, I hate men.”
“It’s not so bleeding easy being a man.” Joe coughed painfully, fighting tears. How could he deal with her? How could he convince her of his humanity? The urge arose to say “I love you, I want to marry you.” Anything to win even a brief respite.
“‘Bleeding,’” she mimicked scornfully. “What is this, National British Day in the southern Rockies?”
“Oh Diana,” he pleaded. “Gimme a break. I know I did wrong, but I’m so confused. I’m blowing everything. I’ve lost the thread. I came over because I wanted to apologize for this morning, honest. I mean, life is tough enough without—”
“You’re not kidding it’s tough enough. I’ll tell you one thing, though. You’re the last male macho son of a bitch that ever gets inside my pants for free. And I’m not kidding. The next motherfucker that pulls a sexual double cross on me, there won’t be blanks in the gun I’m carrying.”
Joe sagged. No use … no use! If only he had a time machine and could rewind his life back to yesterday. Or back to last Saturday night, for that matter. An awful queasiness shook his foundations. He couldn’t bear being hated. Yet how could he prove to her, in twenty-five words or less, that he was actually a decent fellow? Show her his throbbing fist that ached from smashing Heidi? Explain the bite marks on his forearm?
Dully, he said, “Did it ever occur to you, Diana, that the reason you’re always getting beat up is maybe your personal actions with other people aren’t exactly above reproach? I mean, you talk about playing games, you’re not exactly the straightest shooter I ever met.”