Shmucks

by Seymour Blicker

The girl got into the car. She handed a brown paper bag to Levin who grabbed it eagerly.

  “I’m hungry,” he said as he ripped at the paper and pulled out a sandwich.

  “Here, I’ll open the glove compartment. You can put the drinks down there,” Levin said. He opened the little door and the girl placed the two drinks on top of it. Levin took the paper covering from the sandwich and bit into the meat.

  “I bought a sandwich for myself,” the girl said.

  Levin stopped chewing. “Are you sure this is a lean?”

  “I asked him for a lean. Isn’t it a lean?” she asked anxiously.

  “Might be a medium. Doesn’t matter. They make lousy sandwiches anyway. You have to go to Schwartz’s to get a decent sandwich.”

  “What’s Schwartz’s?”

  “Schwartz’s delicatessen on the Main.”

  “Oh.”

  Levin stuffed a handful of french fries into his mouth. He was feeling better already. Now he was ready for a long night’s stand. He reached over and grabbed his drink.

  “This is a gas,” the girl exclaimed. “Do you think I ought to bring the guy his cigarettes?”

  Levin smiled inwardly and thought about it for a moment. It would be fun to simply sit there while the taxi driver watched them. It would drive the man wild thinking that the girl still had his cigarettes, his money and the handout, and wasn’t delivering the goods. It would drive him up the walls. There was no way he would be able to sit there and take it. Eventually he would do something. Levin knew it. It would be game over, with Levin the obvious winner. But, thought Levin, that wouldn’t be fair. He wanted to come out of that alley frontwards, feeling that he had won cleanly through his own sheer fortitude. That would make the eventual victory all the more rewarding. Besides, he didn’t want to encourage the girl to do something which he felt was essentially unlawful.

  “Oh, we might as well let ’im have his lousy cigarettes. But let’s let him wait for another few minutes.”

  “Oh wow, is he ever going to get uptight,” the girl said laughing at the idea.

  “Yeah, he’ll be uptight alright.” Levin chuckled. “Of course,” Levin said, “I think it only fair that he offer us a cigarette or two for your trouble.”

  “Oh wow! That’s heavy,” the girl laughed.

  “You didn’t tell me your name, by the way,” Levin said.

  “It’s Margie.”

  “I’m Mike.”

  “Hi,” Margie said, and smiled sweetly.

  Levin smiled back unable not to. “What kind of cigarettes does he smoke?”

  “Buckingham,” Margie replied.

  “Buckingham! God, the man has got to be mad. I didn’t even know they made those things anymore. He’s probably one of the three or four people in the world who smoke them.”

  Then Levin thought, even if they had been his own brand it wouldn’t be right to take even one. He had never done that type of thing, and he wasn’t about to start now even though he was more than a little tempted.

  “Ah, forget it, we won’t take his cigarettes. It’s not really fair.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Margie said. “Should I bring them over to him now?”

  “Yeah, you might as well. The dumb ass is probably frothing at the mouth by now.”

  “Okay.” Margie got out of the car and began to walk down the lane towards the taxi.

  CHAPTER 12

  PELZIC HAD WATCHED THE GIRL head down the alley and get into the other car. She had been sitting there now for almost ten minutes. His passenger had been talking constantly but Pelzic hadn’t paid any attention. His mind was filled with images of violence. If he had been angry before, he was in a rage now. He was aware that the fingers of his right hand were twitching nervously; and although he was paying no attention to the ramblings of his back-seat passenger, the droning monotone was beginning to bother him. He had an urge to spin around in his seat and give the millionaire a backhand smash on the face. That would quiet him down, Pelzic thought with some satisfaction.

  He had to make a strenuous effort to control himself. Besides, he didn’t want the man’s blood all over the seat. It was enough that the man would probably vomit before he was through.

  The possibility that the man could very well spoil his seat seemed to make Pelzic frantic. He was so furious that a little moan of frustration escaped as he tried to control his violent thoughts. He flicked on his headlights and put them on full beam. He could make out the girl and the man inside the car. They seemed to be eating. He saw the girl lift a bottle to her lips. They’re having a party, he thought–smoking his cigarettes, eating, living it up. Pretty soon, who knows what else they’ll be doing? He didn’t even want to think about it, but he couldn’t stop himself.

  Why! he wondered. Why couldn’t it be me having the party? If only he hadn’t acted so boorishly. He blushed at the thought of how he had exposed himself to the girl. He should have controlled himself, talked nicely for a few minutes about the weather or politics and asked her a little bit about herself, showed some interest in her as a person and then pulled out his prick. That was the trouble with him, he thought–always trying to move too fast.

  He winced again in embarrassment and then felt a slight chill of fear. He was so stupid, he could have been arrested for doing that. Exposing yourself to a minor was a serious offence. They could send you to jail for that. Maybe he was better off that the girl was in the other car. Let him get arrested. He was probably a pervert anyway.

  Pelzic began to feel depressed. This wasn’t the first time he had lost in a battle for a girl’s affection. There had been others in Romania, in France, in Italy, in Poland. Of course, he had been successful with many, but unfortunately never with those to whom he was really attracted.

  He wanted the refined woman who could talk intelligently and play the piano, but he always ended up with the brawny type whose cultural tastes were not overly developed. If they played any musical instrument, it was usually something like the snare drum, or the tuba.

  He remembered one girlfriend in Romania who was crazy about him. Her idea of a perfect evening was to stay at home and wrestle in the parlour. The arrangement was–he had to pin her in order to possess her. All he ever got was a broken nose and a bruised ego. They must have wrestled at least a hundred times and he never even won a single bout. Mind you, he recollected, she outweighed him by a good twenty-five pounds.

  She was typical of the kind of woman that went for him. Why? he wondered. Why did he always get the wrestlers, the soccer players, the discus throwers?

  Pelzic’s thoughts were interrupted by the slamming of a car door. He felt his heart begin to pound. The girl was coming back. Maybe she would get in this time and keep him company if he approached her properly. He cursed, remembering his passenger. Not only was he still there, but he had stank up the entire car. What an impression that would make! The girl would probably think Pelzic was to blame for that. Well, he could explain once he had her in the car. If he was successful, he’d throw the millionaire out. In his drunken state, the man would probably want to get at the girl himself. He could see the next edition of Montréal Matin: Romanian taxi driver and drunken millionaire attack young Canadian girl.

  They would deport him for sure even if the millionaire was the guilty one.

  “Here are your cigarettes.” The girl stood beside the car.

  “Thank you,” Pelzic smiled ingratiatingly. “Please,” he said, cocking his head and lifting a hand in a gesture of sincerity, “please come inside and sit down, I would like to apologize.”

  “That’s okay, mister. I accept your apology.”

  “No, please, I must explain,” Pelzic continued, trying not to appear over-anxious.

  “Look, it’s okay. I mean, there’s no need to go into a song and dance. I mean, if that’s your thing that’s cool.”

  “Who’s that?” Dunsmore suddenly shouted from the back. He hurled himself up and leaned forward towards the window.

  �
��It’s just a friend of mine,” Pelzic said, trying not to show his anger and at the same time attempting to push the man away from the window by leaning back against him.

  “He’s leaving in a minute,” Pelzic told the girl, motioning toward Dunsmore.

  “What do you mean by that?” There was an incredulous and angry sound in Dunsmore’s voice. “You damn well said I could stay.”

  “Before, yes. But now you have to go.”

  “Up yours. You can’t welsh on me. You said I could stay and I’m staying.”

  Margie stood by the window looking slightly confused.

  “You stinked up my whole car,” Pelzic exclaimed.

  “I did not stink up anything. If anyone stinked it, stanked–you stank it up!”

  Pelzic looked imploringly at the girl. “I swear it was him who did it. Don’t you remember how nice it smelled when you got in before?”

  “Mister, are you on dope or something?” the girl asked.

  Before Pelzic could reply, his passenger’s stomach rumbled loudly as though there was some heavy fermentation going on inside.

  “You see. I told you it was him,” Pelzic shouted exultantly, pointing at his passenger. “That proved it.”

  He turned back to the window in jubilation. The girl was gone. He watched her walk to the other car and get in. Pelzic almost cried. He gritted his teeth so hard that he could feel some of them shift about in the gums. Speechless with rage he turned to look at his passenger. How could he make him pay? It was because of him that the girl had left. How could he make the millionaire pay?

  In the back, the man had begun to grunt and groan again. Pelzic looked at him and, trying to continue their earlier conversation, he said, “If you really want him to move maybe he’ll listen to you. Go over and speak to him. Tell him you are not feeling well. Explain to him that you have to go home. Maybe he will feel sorry for you and back up his car. If he does this then I will be very happy to take you to your home at once.”

  “You may have something there,” the man replied, scratching his head.

  “Maybe even offer him a few dollars,” Pelzic suggested. “That should persuade him.”

  “Good idea,” the man said. “I’ll go over and have a chat with him. There’s nothing like the personal contact.”

  “Yes, but make sure to offer only a few dollars, otherwise he might become greedy.”

  “Don’t you worry about that. If he wants too much, I’ll Jew him down fast enough.”

  “You’ll what?” Pelzic asked.

  “I’ll Jew him down . . . you know, bargain him down.”

  “Oh,” Pelzic said, nodding.

  The man gripped the back of Pelzic’s seat and pulled himself over towards the door. He fumbled with the handle. Pelzic leaned over and opened the door for him.

  “Be careful he shouldn’t Jew you up,” Pelzic called.

  The man cocked his head, looked at Pelzic strangely for a moment and then trundled down the laneway towards the other car.

  Pelzic opened his dashboard light and began fiddling with the meter to see if he could speed it up.

  CHAPTER 13

  THE GIRL GOT BACK INTO LEVIN’S CAR. “That man is something else, I mean outasight,” she said, and slouched down into the seat.

  “What happened?”

  “He tried to get me into his car again. He’s got a drunk in the back.”

  “Yeah, I saw him fall out the window of the taxi,” Levin replied. “He fell out right on his head. He must really be plastered.”

  “When I gave him the cigarettes he tried to get rid of the drunk, but the drunk wouldn’t go.”

  “The driver must be a real prize shmuck.”

  “Yeah,” the girl said. “What is that exactly anyway?”

  “A shmuck?” Levin asked.

  “Yes.”

  “A shmuck is a shmuck.” The girl raised her eyebrows slightly. “I mean . . . you can’t define that word. Basically if you translate it literally, it means a prick. But there are a lot of levels to the word, little nuances depending on how you prefix it. There are all kinds of shmucks–dumb shmucks, stupid shmucks, clever shmucks, prize shmucks, king shmucks. Like if you were talking to a certain guy, you could say, ‘You’re a real clever shmuck, aren’t you?’ Did you hear the way I said that? Did you catch the little inflection, the note of disdain in my voice?”

  “Yes, I did, it sounded nasty.”

  “That’s right, because the clever shmuck really gets some people uptight. He tries to be smart at the expense of another person; so quite often that other person says, ‘You’re a real clever shmuck, aren’t you?’ It’s a kind of rhetorical question. It’s more like a statement made by the person just before he punches the clever shmuck in the face.”

  The girl nodded her head in understanding.

  Out of the corner of his eye Levin saw the passenger getting out of the taxi. He watched as the man stumbled towards his car, weaving from side to side. He approached Levin’s window and leaned forward so that his head was almost inside the car.

  Levin drew back, overpowered by the whisky stench.

  “Say, young fella, would you mind backing your car up so that the taxi can get through?”

  “I’m sorry but I can’t. If the taxi wants to leave, he’ll have to leave backwards. That way.” Levin pointed at the opposite end of the alley.

  “Couldn’t you let him through?”

  “No, I can’t,” Levin replied. “He’s in the wrong. It’s up to him to move.”

  “Can I come in and sit down? I’d like to discuss this thing rationally with you?”

  The girl leaned over and whispered into Levin’s ear, “Don’t let ’im in. He’ll really stink your car up. He stank up the whole taxi.”

  “I don’t see the point of discussing this thing,” Levin said. “It’s a simple matter of right and wrong and I’m right and he’s wrong. I think we’d be wasting our time talking about it.”

  “You don’t understand. I had an awful lot of trouble just walking down this lane from the taxi.” He flung an arm in a wild flopping gesture toward the other car. “I’m quite ill this evening. I’ve got to get home to bed.”

  “Why don’t you get out onto Peel Street and flag another one?” the girl asked.

  “I couldn’t make it all the way down there and, besides, I wouldn’t want anyone to see me in this state.”

  “Well, look mister, I’m really sorry but I can’t move.”

  “Damn it, you have to!” He pushed his head inside the car so that his face was an inch or two from Levin’s.

  Levin drew back even farther. “Look mister, please go away.”

  “Now listen here, don’t you talk to me like that.” The man reached inside as though to grab Levin’s tie.

  Levin pressed the button controlling the left front power window. The window went up trapping the man’s hand at a point between the elbow and the shoulder. Levin didn’t want to injure the man. He simply wanted to immobilize him for a moment and calm him down. He had always wanted to try that little trick but until then had never been presented with such a good opportunity. He was pleased to see how well it worked. However, it hadn’t calmed the man down, but in fact seemed to be producing an opposite effect. The man was strenuously trying to pull his arm free, and Levin was afraid the glass might splinter.

  “Hey mister, calm down and I’ll let you go, okay?”

  “Open that bloody window, damn you!” the man yelled. “Let me go. Why don’t you pick on someone your own age?!”

  “I’m not picking on you!” Levin protested, suddenly feeling very defensive.

  “Well let my arm go, you damn bully.”

  “Okay, okay, but don’t bug me. I can’t move my car so just leave me alone. Ask the taxi prick to move.”

  “Yeah, just blow,” the girl yelled. “Just fuck off, mother fucker. Split.”

  Levin brought the window down. The man withdrew his arm, stepped back from the car and began to rub the area that had
been squeezed.

  “You’re a madman!” he shouted. “You ought to be reported to the police.”

  “Fine, you call them and we’ll see which of us they’ll arrest,” Levin replied curtly.

  “I’m not someone to tamper with,” the man mumbled.

  “I’m not tampering with you, you’re tampering with me,” Levin responded.

  “You are tampering with me,” the man said.

  “I don’t tamper with anybody,” Levin replied.

  “Well, I would call getting my arm stuck in a window tampering.”

  “It was your own fault, you tampered with me first,” Levin said.

  “Yeah,” the girl interjected, pointing a finger at the man. “You’re the bloody tamperer if anybody is, not him.”

  “Don’t throw a tamper tentrum at me, young lady,” the man said, bending slightly to face the girl. “I’m old enough to be your father.”

  “Grandfather is more like it,” the girl retorted.

  The man winced and straightened up. He looked wearily at Levin. “Would five dollars make you change your mind?”

  Levin’s heart soared with joy. He had always wanted to be in just such a situation where a bribe was offered and a matter of principle was involved. When he first went into the real estate business, he was certain that people would be constantly trying to bribe him to obtain various contracts. But after eight years in the business he was still waiting.

  He had a vague feeling that the appropriate thing to do now would be to leap out of the car and hurl the man into the brick wall but he couldn’t see the sense in that. He had no desire at all to assault the man. Levin recollected that in the movies physical punishment was usually called for in this kind of situation but he couldn’t understand why. Levin just shook his head. “Look, I’m not moving. I’m sorry you’re not feeling well but there are other taxis around.”

  “I’ll give you ten dollars,” the man said.

  “Look, I don’t want your money. Just leave me alone, okay.”

  “Bug off, man,” the girl hissed.

  Levin smiled inwardly. She was really on his side, fighting for him, cursing for him. That was a very good sign.