The Man Who Cancelled Himself

by David Handler

  Only it was Katrina. She’d changed from her sedate office ensemble into a pair of skintight Gianni Versace leopard-skin jeans and a black suede baseball jacket, which she wore zipped to the neck. She stood in the doorway with her hands stuffed in her jacket pockets, looking around the place. It doesn’t take long. Then she focused on me, or rather about a foot to the right of me. Her eye seemed to get worse as the day wore on.

  “You don’t live very well,” she squeaked, tossing her frizzy blond mane.

  “Just passing through. This is strictly temporary.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Nineteen years.” I made room for her on the easy chair, which involved shooing Lulu out of it. “Have a seat.”

  Before she did, Katrina unzipped her jacket and draped it over my desk chair. She was wearing a sheer, shimmery bodysuit under it, the sort that a woman might wear with a silk camisole underneath. Or, if she were feeling particularly frisky, a black satin bra. Katrina wore neither of these things. She wore absolutely nothing. Her immense, gravity-defying breasts were just right there, the nipples a pale pink and the approximate circumference of a 7 Eleven Big Gulp cup. I stared. I couldn’t help it. They looked as if they might honk if I squeezed them. Or squirt me in the face. Or … oh, never mind.

  “I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” she said, choosing to sit next to me on the couch. “I’ve stopped by to visit a few of the others.”

  “That’s very considerate of you.”

  “It’s the least I can do. I feel so badly. What I really want to do is take you home and give you crabs.”

  I tugged at my ear. “Excuse me?”

  “I make them with spices from the Maryland shore. That’s where I’m from originally. Best thing in the world when you’re not feeling well.”

  “I don’t doubt that for a second.”

  She smelled of lily of the valley, a heavy, cloying scent vaguely reminiscent of a Frank E. Campbell funeral parlor. It made me drowsy. Lulu went over to her and sniffed at her, whimpering weakly.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Katrina wondered, petting her.

  “She’s hungry,” I replied, trying not to stare at her hooters. Katrina’s, not Lulu’s.

  “I can feed her for you,” she offered.

  “Please don’t. We’re a team. If I suffer, she suffers. Besides, she was gloating earlier.”

  “Dogs don’t gloat,” scolded Katrina.

  “Believe me, she gloats. Has Lyle calmed down?”

  “Oh, yes, he’s lots better. He can be a little scary when things … boil over. But afterwards, he’s fine. For him, letting go is a really healthy thing.”

  “I’m not so sure his plumber would agree.”

  “Plus, he had a good, heart-to-heart phone conversation with God, and that made him feel a lot better. See, Lyle wanted to push back the taping a week so we’d have time to do things right. God said no, because that would mean we’d have to push back our air date, too, and we’re a big, big part of premiere week. So then Lyle suggested we bump Rob Roy Fruitwell back to a later episode, so we can give him the attention he deserves. But again God said no. …”

  “I thought you said Lyle feels a lot better.”

  “Because God agreed to cover the overages,” she explained patiently. “We’ll have to tape over the weekend. That means paying the crew monster overtime. Costs us a fortune. The network never kicks in on that. They consider it the supplier’s problem. But God said he’d foot the bill. That’s a major, major show of support. Lyle really needed to hear something like that. We’ll tape on Saturday. We’ll still have to rush, but at least it’s doable. There’s a writer’s meeting tomorrow at nine. Marjorie will be there.”

  “Okay.”

  She shot me a nervous sidelong glance. “Actually, Lyle doesn’t know I’m here.” She chewed fretfully on the inside of her mouth.

  “Why are you?”

  “I told you—to see how you are.”

  I nodded. “Me and a few of the others.”

  “None of the others,” she confessed in a soft, intimate voice. “Just you. I was really upset about that little tiff we had on the set this morning. You were absolutely right—it’s not your job to baby-sit Lyle.” She let out a sigh, hooters heaving. “I think I’ve figured out what our problem is.”

  “We have a problem?”

  “We’re too much alike.”

  “We are?”

  “We both have trouble trusting anybody. Because we’ve both seen the bad side of other people.”

  “You mean there’s a good side to other people?”

  “I have one,” she asserted, her eyes meeting mine. Almost. “And so do you. I want us to like each other, Hoagy. We’re on the same side. Lyle’s side. We should be friends. We should be … close.” She put her hand on my thigh.

  I glanced down at it. Her fingers were gently caressing my dressing gown. She was no Kewpie doll, this one. She was smart and she was tough. Also pissed off at Lyle for fucking Naomi Leight behind her back. Was this her way of getting even? I took her hand and held it. She let me. She even leaned into me so that her right breast rested on my arm. It was surprisingly heavy. “I’m glad you feel that way, Katrina. Because I do, too.”

  “Oh, good,” she whispered, her breath moist on my neck.

  I was very warm all of a sudden. Her body heat. Lyle wasn’t kidding. She was a woman to perspire to. “It must not be easy. Being in a relationship with him, I mean.”

  Her steamy thigh pressed against mine. “Oh, it’s not. He’s so, so weak. Like a little boy. And he isn’t in the habit of thinking about someone else’s feelings. Not like you are.”

  “Is there something you wanted to tell me, Katrina? Something you didn’t want Lyle to know you’d told me?”

  She looked at me blankly. “Like what?”

  “Has he ever hit you?”

  “Oh, no … Well, not really.”

  “It’s not a gray area, Katrina. Either he has or he hasn’t.”

  “Last spring,” she admitted, gingerly fingering her jaw. “Only he wasn’t hitting me, per se. He was hitting God. For cancelling him.”

  “And did you consider cancelling him?”

  She lowered her eyes. “It’s only happened that one time.”

  “And if it happens again?”

  “I’m not a punching bag, if that’s what you’re wondering,” she said defensively. “I have too high an opinion of myself to let anybody do that to me.”

  “Good.” I squeezed her hand. “May I ask you something else?”

  She ran her fingers lightly through my hair. “You can ask me anything.”

  “Why did you doctor the chili?”

  She hadn’t seen that one coming. “What are you talking about?” she demanded frostily, dropping my hand.

  “The catered lunch was all your idea. You specified chili. You even helped serve it. You and Lyle. Only Lyle got sick, and you didn’t. Why did you do it, Katrina?”

  She shook her head at me in bewilderment. “Are you for real?”

  “As seldom as possible. What did you use, anyway?”

  “You’re crazy!” she cried, her eyes blazing at me. “The food was sitting there in the hallway outside the rehearsal room for five or ten minutes while we were setting up the tables. Anybody could have put something in the chili. And, besides, why would I even want to, huh?! What possible reason would I have?” She gazed at me uncertainly. “What is this, some kind of test?”

  “No, this is me trying to figure out what the hell’s going on.”

  My phone rang. I took it in the bedroom. It was Pam, Merilee’s most British housekeeper.

  “Greetings, dear boy,” she exclaimed cheerily. “I trust you are well.”

  “That would be something of an exaggeration, Pam.” I flopped down on my unmade bed. “And you?”

  “I myself am ginger peachy. But, alas, poor Vic …”

  “Something’s happened to Vic?”

  “
It has indeed. This frightful business between you and Merilee. Oh, he’s putting up the bravest of fronts—men will be men and all. But he’s taking it terribly hard.”

  “Look, Pam, if you’re calling about Lulu …”

  “Merilee needs her, Hoagy. The poor dear is inconsolable. Weeps at the drop of a hat.”

  “Good.”

  She was silent a moment. “This isn’t like you, Hoagy.”

  “It’s the new me.”

  “Oh, dear, I was still trying to fathom the old you. I do wish you’d reconsider, Hoagy. It would be the decent thing to do. You’ve always been decent.”

  “That was the old me. I’m sorry, Pam. Also appalled. If she needs Lulu this badly you’d think she’d have the courtesy to ask me herself.”

  “But she doesn’t even know I’m calling,” Pam insisted hurriedly. “It was entirely my own idea.”

  “Do you and Vic rehearse your lines together, or what?”

  She was silent again. “I haven’t the slightest idea who the father is, Hoagy.”

  “I wasn’t asking,” I growled.

  “I only know Merilee’s spirits are terribly, terribly low. No one visits. No one rings up. I—I’m worried about her. A woman needs her strength at a time like this.”

  I could hear Katrina stirring around in the kitchen. “Look, Pam, I can’t talk right now, okay?”

  She gasped, horrified. “You’ve a woman there, haven’t you? A bleached blonde—with a monstrous pair of cow udders on her.”

  I found myself glancing out the window. “Are you perched on the roof across the way with a pair of binoculars?”

  “I am not,” Pam replied witheringly. “I simply know men—too bloody well.” And with that she hung up. I think she was disappointed with me.

  Katrina was putting down canned mackerel for Lulu. “You didn’t have any other pet food,” she squeaked. “I thought she might eat this stuff.”

  “She’ll do fine,” I said, watching her wolf it down. The smell of it made me light-headed, but I held my ground.

  “The poor thing was whimpering,” Katrina explained.

  “That’s one of the things she’s best at.”

  “I really should go,” she said. “Lyle misses me.”

  “I understand Leo misses you, too.”

  “Why, what have you heard about the two of us?” she asked casually.

  “That she cared about you.”

  “We were friends,” Katrina stated. “If she thought we were anything more than that, she got the wrong idea.”

  “Sure you didn’t help her?”

  “Positive,” she replied coldly. “If I had my way I’d shit-can her. She’s such a negative presence. But Lyle won’t allow it. They work too well together.”

  “So I hear.”

  She came over to me and reached for the belt of my dressing down and held it in the palm of her hand. She stood very close to me, her nipples grazing against my chest, her eyes fastened on my mouth. I think. “You’re going to hear a lot of negative buzz about me,” she said softly. “Don’t believe it. Ninety percent is envy. Because of how I look. And because I have Lyle. You have to understand how much everybody there resents me.”

  “Bobby doesn’t,” I pointed out. “In fact, he’s crazy about you.”

  “How sweet,” she said, her eyes flickering with surprise. Or that may have been her computer filing away the data for future use. “It’s like I told you when we met, Hoagy. I always get what I want.”

  “That must be nice.”

  A faint smile crossed her lips. “Oh, it is. It’s very nice.”

  “You’ll have to tell me how you do it sometime.”

  “I show better than I tell,” she said, leaning in closer. Now her nipples were climbing inside my dressing gown. “I’m beginning to think you and I have a future.”

  “And what about Lyle?”

  “Maybe all we have is a past.”

  “You change your verb tenses awfully fast,” I observed.

  “Some things I do fast. Other things I do real slooow … ” Just in case I was missing her point she ran her tongue seductively over her lower lip. “You can help him, you know,” she whispered.

  “Can I?”

  “Well, the word’s out that you’re definitely in with Miss Priss,” she pointed out.

  “Am I?”

  “You can help him,” she repeated, a bit more desperately.

  “And if I can’t?”

  She didn’t bother to answer that one. Didn’t need to. It was obvious. She was looking to hold onto what she had, with or without Lyle. Ready to change sides. Ready to change men. Ready for anything. Or at least ready to let me think she was.

  “I felt something happen that first day, Hoagy,” she squeaked, tugging gently at my belt. I wished she’d stop doing that. “The second you and Lulu rang the doorbell.”

  “I was the one who rang it. She just stood there doing nothing.” Like she stood there now, stuffing her face on cat food.

  “I felt someone important walking into my life,” Katrina confessed. “Someone who could see right inside my soul.”

  “You’re mistaken there. My vision isn’t nearly what it used to be. In fact, my ophthalmologist is talking bifocals.”

  “Don’t tease me.” She pouted. “I’m laying myself wide open. I’m out there.”

  “I’m out there, too, Katrina.” Not that I knew what the hell that meant. I only knew it was what she wanted to hear. And that she might eventually prove useful to me. Strictly in a professional sense, you understand.

  She let out a little squeal of pleasure and threw her arms around me. “I’m so glad we had this talk, Hoagy,” she exclaimed, hugging me tightly. “I feel so much better about us now.” She planted a warm, wet kiss on my neck. Then she zipped her zoomers safely and snugly back inside her jacket and left me there, wondering.

  There was so much to wonder about. Had Katrina doctored the chili? Bombed the set? Stolen Uncle Chubby’s sweater? She did have a key to the wardrobe cupboard. What about the Deuce Theater? Had she set Lyle up? Why would she do that? Why would she do any of it? What possible reason could she have for wanting to destroy Uncle Chubby? It made zero sense. Besides, Lyle had said the two of them were together when the bombs went off. He could vouch for her. … He could not, however, vouch for Fiona. No one could vouch for Fiona, and she hadn’t eaten the chili either. Was she responsible for all of this? Was this her getting even with Lyle? I wondered. Just as I wondered about Naomi, who hadn’t touched the chili and who was screwing Lyle. How did she figure in? And what about Chad Roe? He’d lied to me about what he was doing when the bombs went off. Either he’d lied or Amber Walloon had. Of course, they’d both gotten sick from the chili …

  I stood there, wondering. Not for long, though. My buzzer sounded again, and this time is was Very, in his shorts and hiking boots, extremely out of breath. Sweat streamed down his face and neck. “Evening, dude,” he panted. “Dig, wasn’t that Katrina Tingle I just saw wiggling on down the street?”

  “It was.”

  He nodded. “Thought I recognized her from this morning. She don’t exactly blend into a crowd.”

  “Especially with her jacket off.”

  “I’m down to that. You poking her behind Hudnut’s back?”

  “Not exactly.”

  He peered at me suspiciously. “Meaning you’re not poking her? Or you are but he’s hip to it?”

  “None of the above.”

  He mopped his face with a bandanna. “Whew, gotta cop me a squat.”

  “Don’t let me stop you.”

  “Street hiked up here from Soho—a solid hour at warp speed.” He settled carefully into the easy chair, wincing. “Damned hernia. Son-of-a-bitch surgeon cut me open like a fish. I could tell you stories about—”

  “Now wouldn’t be a good time, Lieutenant. Get you a beer?”

  “I could handle that.”

  I opened him a Bass, and after a moment’s deliberation, one f
or myself. We drank, Very nodding to his own rock ’n’ roll beat. Lulu stuck her head on his bare knee. He patted her. “That surgical mask Hudnut wears. What’s up with that?”

  “He’s risk averse.” I took a seat on the sofa. “Or so he claims.”

  “Yo, he picked the wrong city to live in.”

  “Yo, he picked the wrong universe to live in.”

  “Got the lab results on the chili,” he informed me, gulping down his beer.

  “That was fast.”

  “Rushed it through.”

  “And?”

  “And you was right, dude. There was a foreign substance in it, category nontoxic. Ever hear of ipecac?”

  “Syrup of ipecac? Sure. Parents keep it around in case their midget human life forms swallow something they shouldn’t.”

  “That’s the stuff. Guaranteed to induce projectile vomiting in fifteen to twenty minutes.”

  It was my turn to wince. “Projectile and vomiting are two words I don’t need to hear together in the same sentence for a few weeks, Lieutenant. If you don’t mind.”

  “Sorry, dude.” He drained his beer. “Mind if I suck down another one? Worked up a major thirst.”

  “Help yourself.”

  “Mind getting it for me? Hard for me to get up once I’m down. See, he slashed right through my lower abdominal muscles and—”

  “I’ll get it, I’ll get it.” I fetched it for him, though I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention that to anyone. “So that’s what was in the chili? Syrup of ipecac?”

  “No.”

  I frowned. “But you just said—”

  “Stay with me—Syrup of ipecac would never work. Too strong a flavor. Shit tastes like—”

  “No need to go into details.”

  “Plus the adult dosage is two tablespoons. To knock out fifty-plus people you’d have to dump something like two quarts of it into the chili. No way you wouldn’t notice it. What this was, dude, was fluid extract of ipecac, which ain’t exactly lavender honey either, but it’s fourteen times stronger than the syrup. Couple of ounces in the pot and—coo-coo-ka-choo—you’re all taking a guided tour on the Chunk City Express. The chili, being highly spiced, disguised the taste.”