Your Day In The Barrel

by Alan Furst

  “This is Mona, my sister; I’m Francine.”

  “Hi, I’m Howard.”

  “We’re gonna take him home. He’s got some fantastic shit.”

  “Far out.”

  We hit the street and there’s a huge crowd out front now, all the styles and all the looks and all the postures.

  They walk on either side of me, both about five feet six, though I don’t think Mona has stopped growing yet. Francine says “We gotta getta subway.”

  “That’s okay,” I say, ’cause a cab is letting someone out on the comer and, after a brief chase, we get in. Francine says “One hundred and eighty-seventh street and twenty-seventh avenue in Queens, please,” in her best talking-to-the-cabdriver voice.

  “I don’t go to Queens,” says the cabbie, a grizzled oldtimer.

  “Be a sport,” I say, “ten bucks over the meter.”

  “I’m goin’ off duty.”

  “Fifteen and I don’t give your number to the Hack Bureau.”

  “I got no pressure in the brakes; I got to go back to the garage.”

  “Twenty and I don’t call your boss and tell him you didn’t throw the flag.”

  “Long Island Expressway or 59th Street Bridge?” he says, starting the meter.

  My new home is four rooms, swollen with drapes and carpets, really a motel room that grew, an awful shade of lime green everywhere. Knickknacks all over the place. But it has air-conditioning that’s been on cold for a while and it’s on the ninth floor so nobody can look in the window, if they could ever see past those drapes. A cozy little nest. “Find me here, you bastards” I think. I’ve got to play this right. The way I feel now I’d fuck a snake if somebody’d hold its head, but I’ve got to get into being a plain old house guest at least until Auntie gets back, so I’m gonna feed these two the best dope they ever had, for a week or so, and then stick my nose out and see if something bites it off. Everyone goes to the bathroom, and Francine produces three big green-tinted glasses of what she says is Diet Pepsi, and a half box of Loma Doones. On go both the television, sound off, and an AM radio, sound on, playing a Cat Stevens song. I sit on the floor and Francine and Mona sit on the couch, kind of like the sisters in Gone with the Wind or something, being courted by the Colonel, suh. Which I suppose I am, in a way.

  The girls don’t own a coke spoon, but Auntie has a set of measuring spoons and we use the tiniest one and hit each nostril twice, and pretty good. The radio has got wicked little box speakers at either end of a bookcase which carries six or seven Reader’s Digest Condensed Books and a bunch of phony porcelain lords and ladies and little boys fishing—and the Grateful Dead song, “Uncle John’s Band,” played through tumed-up treble and turned-down base, is now banging around the walls. The coke has completely cooled me out. I’m the King of the Ice Palace, and every object in my life is seen at its proper distance: far, far, far away. It’s a very scientific high, draining the subjective heat out and hardening the lines of both pleasures and pains—whatever you got right then. I don’t rush exactly, but I do somehow get up above things far enough so that once again I’m the ant in the timeless, spaceless, universe/void. How can the King of the Ice Palace be the Universal Ant? Here’s how: Schn-u-u-u-rp, and schn-u-u-u-rp and away we go again. My eyes are closed, and on the lids my little men are projecting slo-mo replays of the last week: Villegas waving his automatic, Byszka’s car rebounding from the impact, the dope tumbling into the mountain meadow, Genelle putting on her wig, Roosevelt in the motel, Sister Mary Metaphor offering a granola/hash cookie, Robbie with his plastic machine gun, Lieberman trying to back away from the sputtering tear-gas pen. That’s enough of that, and I open my eyes and the Dead are about six bars further along into “Uncle John’s Band.”

  “Oh the first days are the hardest days don’t you worry any more ’Cause when life looks like easy street there is danger at your door.

  Think this through with me let me know your mind Oh, oh what I want to know is are you kind”

  Acoustic Dead, harmonizing their best, guitars pinging away underneath, on and off the rhythm, reasoning with anybody who’ll listen or the whole world. Now comes that little squeaky percussion thing in the background, in and out it goes, and in and . . . hmmmmm, I’m looking right at an ankle and that ankle is bobbing, well, restlessly, up and down, up and down. Attached to it is Mona, the younger girl, and when I meet her eyes she gives me one very high smile, comers of her mouth heading right through the ceiling and out into the Forest Hills night. Her eyes drift away, and I follow them to the television. Yeeks, it’s one of those Japanese horror films, one of the really bad ones, where you can see the zippers on the monsters.

  “Hey,” says Francine, “this shit is outrageous.” “Yeah,” says Mona, “outrageous.”

  “I got lots.”

  “Wow,” says Francine.

  The sisters exchange a look. Francine says “My sister has an incredible body.”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “Like you don’t know.”

  “Looks fine.”

  “Yeah, it’s fine. Fine little thing.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Mona smiles at me again, and brushes some hair back. Francine says “We have these, like, beauty contests.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Her body is just so fine.”

  “Yeah.”

  “She wins the contests, not always, but she wins ’em.”

  “Who has the contest?”

  “Just her and me, man, we have the contest.”

  “Who’s a judge?”

  “She’s a judge and I’m a judge and you’re a judge and here comes the judge.” And we all laugh, a very tight laugh. There’s enough static electricity in this room to light the whole city of Denver for six months. The walls are swelling.

  “I’m a judge?”

  “Sure. Just like Bert Parks at A’lantic City.”

  “Here she comes, Ms Am-e-r-r-r-i-ca,” I try to sing, but my nose is so dried out it comes out more like a croak. Mona gets up, and with head held high, tits stuck out and bottom tucked in, walks slowly to the end of the room, turns, pauses in a fashion model still-life, hands spread out and face at a three-quarter exposure, and then she walks back and stands in the same pose.

  “Ya-a-a-y” says Francine and claps her hands. Mona tilts her head royally in acknowledgment. Then Francine gets up and walks over to her sister. She makes a fist under her chin, and I can see the phantom microphone she’s holding. She turns toward me, “Here she is folks, Miss Mona Rennick.”

  “Ya-a-a-y” I say, clapping lightly.

  “Miss Mona, do you think you can be number one?” “Maybe.”

  “She’s Miss America,” says Francine, and one hand still in the microphone pose, she starts unbuttoning all the little buttons on the front of her sister’s sweater.

  Mona is standing completely still, eyes wide in her pose, and smiling right into my brain. As the V opens, a little wider every second, I feel myself start to rush like crazy and I almost have to close my eyes. Almost but not quite. Mona dips her shoulders and off comes the sweater. Her tits are heavy, cantaloupes, but she’s fifteen and they are still standing proud.

  “Look, America,” says Francine, “aren’t they far out?” and she holds first one and then the other with her free hand. From six feet away I can see Mona’s nipples harden tight. With one hand Francine turns her around by the shoulder. She has a good sunburned back, broad across the shoulders and wide at the hips, swelling over the top of her shorts. Francine walks around her and stands directly in front, looking at me above her sister’s right shoulder. Her head is practically resting on the shoulder and she can’t be more than an inch away.

  “Miss America,” says Francine, “you’re stoned.” Mona laughs and shakes her blond hair yes. Then her body involuntarily jumps and simultaneously I hear the snick of an undone snap. “And here is Miss America,” says Francine and puts both her hands around Mona’s waist and lowers her
shorts to her ankles. That ass I thought was fat, isn’t. It’s full and round and bursting through the back of red bikini underpants. Mona daintily lifts one foot and then kicks the other and the shorts go flying into the kitchenette. She’s still in her fashion pose, but I can see her back moving with her breathing and her ass is clenched, muscles holding it in a tight curve. Francine gets down on her knees and walks over to me across the carpet. Following her with my eyes, I suddenly notice the TV screen, where the Japanese Army is firing tracer bullets into a kind of Gila monster with an ape’s face. The thing shakes its head in rage and flaps its claws about furiously. The sound is off but I imagine it’s roaring pretty good. Francine gets about a foot away from me and leans way over so that her whole face is in my vision. I can see the blusher makeup on her cheeks and green shadow on her eyelids. She smiles at me real slow, not a ‘hello-there!’ smile like her sister’s, but a thin, witchy smile. Then her lips brush mine, I taste a little Diet Pepsi, and she draws back real slow and says “You’re far out.” I just smile.

  Quickly she turns around and walks on her knees back to her sister, stopping this time directly behind her. She turns her head over her shoulder and says, “What do you think of Miss America?”

  “I think Miss America is fine.”

  “Clap for Miss America.”

  And I clap, but slowly and not in rhythm, and she turns her head casually to the left, moving in slow motion now, and reaching up and peeling her lips back, she takes the middle of the top hem of her sister’s red underpants between her front four teeth and pauses. A rocket goes off inside my head and the whole scene changes color right through the spectrum. The underpants are red, then purple, then blue-black, then suddenly white, then yellow, then orange, and back to red. Francine sings through her closed teeth and red nylon: “Here thee ith, Mith Amer-r-r-r-caaa.” And slowly begins lowering her whole head, and her sister’s round ass, white against her sunburn, comes rolling out at me. Her muscles are still taut, but the cleft, now just thinnest of dark lines, looks incredibly deep. Francine keeps on going until she is at knee level, opens her teeth and the panties go the rest of the way by themselves.

  I’m still clapping but now I stop, ’cause Mona kicks her panties away and the motion sets off a new round of flares behind my eyes. Francine stands and moves in front of her sister and with two hands on her shoulders, pushes her down so that she is upright on her knees. My mind flattens against the back of my skull and there isn’t room for anything but what I’m looking at.

  “And now,” says Francine, her voice harsh and missing a little, “Miss America will receive her prize and she will be queen for all night.” She kneels facing her sister, who spreads her knees apart a few inches, and I can see Francine’s fingers start to move, rubbing gently, between her sister’s thighs. Then with her other hand she presses Mona’s back so that she’s on hands and knees, and says “Come on over here Bert Parks and give Miss America her prize,” and with both hands, spreads the whole thing apart.

  I squirm out of my clothes, and knee-walk over to the girls. I can feel the acrylic pile in that carpeting burning my skin and out of the comer of my eye I see the Gila ape taking huge strides and the Japanese soldiers abandoning their machine guns and fleeing in panic, watching terrified, over their shoulders, as the monster strips trees from the hill and hurls them into the sky. Then I’m next to Mona and Francine and they are breathing very hard and even in the air conditioning there is a light sweat on Mona’s back. Francine keeps her fingers moving and I can feel them pause against me as I slide in. With her other hand, she is undoing her own sweater and her eyes are fastened on her sister’s face.

  One minute she’s with me, the next with Mona, then with both, then herself. My vision starts to red-out at the edges, like the blood inside me is washing back into my brain on the outstroke and slamming against the inside of my head on the instroke only to turn around like a tide and flow out again in waves. This must be the coke, I tell myself, giving me play-by-play on all the chemistry and machinery roaring around my body, but nothing helps, and before I reach some unknown point where I’m sure I’m gonna sail right out of my body into zero-time, I come like a bandit, with a loud growl. Francine and Mona, quick to follow, make their own growls and the threesome collapses sideways right in front of the TV screen. I’m fighting for breath but I see in front of my nose the Monster, thrashing about in the Sea of Japan with huge billows of steam pouring off the surface. “That’s okay,” I think, “if you set the big fucker on fire, throw him into the sea to cool off.”

  We spend the next three days together. The couch in front of the television folds out and with TV and radio and bed and three human bodies attemping to get their holes, fingers and protrusions into new combinations, time passes easily. By telephone, I make arrangments with a Chinese restaurant on Queens Boulevard and a smiling waiter appears five times each day with dynamite Szechuan dishes, one pepperier than the next. For a ten-dollar tip, he is pleased to deliver. The chef, given a free hand, sends whatever he likes that day, and he’s got a touch and a half. By the end of the third day, as a matter of fact, cunts, tits and assholes are getting a whole lot less interesting than shrimp, chicken and pork. Also, the money flowing out reminds me that I’ve got to get some things settled so I can take up my old life again. So I leave Francine and Mona and, a little wobbly on my feet, find a telephone booth. Lieberman answers right away.

  “Hi there. Been stashed?”

  “Very.”

  “I’ve been grilling Villegas but he swears the worst things he’s done are agitate the local labor and deal dope.”

  “Is your phone cool?”

  “Had it swept this morning and it’s fine. My friends in the TV truck are still out there, however, so don’t come visiting if you don’t want your picture taken.”

  “I ain’t photogenic.”

  “I did some work for you, by the way. I’m reading from Friday’s Arlington Herald:

  A body was found on the lawn of Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Noonan, 20 Crestview Lane, early Thursday morning by a driver from the Lazzeri Refuse Disposal Company. The body, according to Arlington police, is that of a male, about 30 years old, possibly of Latin origin. The body remains unidentified and persons with information should contact Sgt. Roy Lewis of the Arlington Police.

  Mr. Noonan, an employee of NASA in Washington D.C. told reporters he had never seen the person before. Mr. Noonan said, “I’m dealing with the granting of federal contracts, perhaps this is a warning of some kind.”

  “Hmmmm,” I say.

  “I checked Roosevelt’s address with the information operator. He moved about six months ago.”

  “I got that information about 20 Crestview Lane from a friend at the Welfare Department. So six-month old stuff is about right, or maybe he hasn’t told the Motor Vehicle Bureau that he moved.”

  “Also, my friend in D.C. came through. There’s bad news and there’s good news.”

  “Gimme the bad first.”

  “Okay, Edward Hugh Roosevelt is an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency.”

  I feel my knees start to wobble, and I put out a hand to keep myself from sliding down the side of the phone booth like a snail.

  “Want the good news?”

  “Go ahead, but I don’t see how good it can be after that.”

  “Mr. Roosevelt is employed as a dietitian. He runs the employees’ cafeteria.”

  “WHAT?”

  “Sure man, the oldest story in the world. Being next to it wasn’t enough for him. He just had to be one of the boys.”

  “And the other one? Clyde Moss?”

  “Nothing.”

  “So what the fuck is going on? Did Villegas sell bad hamburger to the CIA?”

  “I’m pretty sure Roosevelt doesn’t represent the CIA.”

  “So who?”

  “Well, he wasn’t after any money on your end, unless he and Byszka were plotting to steal your fifty thou. That could be. But why on earth send you out t
o kill somebody and give you a gun to do it with? Why use his real name? Why not just hold you up beside the highway? I got one theory, Roosevelt has to be getting paid on the other end, or it’s political.”

  “Political?”

  “Crazies, left, right, or center.”

  “Birchers?”

  “Oh, this is a little too hairy for them. Have to be farther out yet.”

  “So where is it?”

  “Has Genelle been on your out-of-town trips for long?”

  “About eight months.”

  “And she lives in the East Village? Lives there regularly?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you living anywhere in the last, say, six months on a steady basis?”

  “No, I live here and there. But I’d been staying with Genelle on and off.”

  “And when you came back into town with your trailer, that’s where you went?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “You got to go back there.”

  “Fuck no.” _

  “That’s where they picked you up. I’ll bet on it. And you got to hang around there until somebody tries to contact you and then we’ll bust ’em.”

  “Get serious, man, they’ll kill me. It happens every day in New York, the cops won’t even notice.”

  “You need protection.”

  “I need to catch the first flight for Paris.”

  “On what money?”

  “I’m holding.”

  “Don’t shit yourself, friend, you’ll be broke in three years, then what?”

  “I’ll go back to school.”

  “In a pig’s ass. You won’t be a free man until this gets worked out, and you know it.”

  “Or, you are the most curious sonofabitch in the city.”

  “Yeah, curious enough to find out about Roosevelt and your screwed-up corpse trip. You’re gonna have to trust somebody, your attorney is a good place to start.” “Okay, okay, what do I do.”

  “You’ll see a guy hanging around. Big guy, brown hair, about forty, wears sport shirts and slacks. He looks like heat, that’s ’cause he’s a former NYPD detective. Name’s Charley McGrath. You should get to Genelle’s about five tonight and he’ll be around and you’ll be paying him $150 a day and expenses to keep your ass out of a sling.”