by Patti Abbott
What he said was true though—my fall from the upper echelons of the profession had been gradual but steep. I remembered Joey coughing up his lungs in the desert a few years back. Didn’t spend his last days in the slam like most of ‘em. Lived to be 97 years old. Partly because of me, I might add. In my prime, I was top dog in the field—but it was a long time ago now. I’d become an empty suit at some point, hadn’t burned anyone in more than ten years. Wasn’t even sure I had the Cracker Jacks to do it.
“Also did a week with Gotti himself in ‘90,” I reminded the guys, swallowing the last of the rye and banging my glass on the counter.
Small shows of bravado was what it’d come down to for me. I was teetering on the edge of humiliation, regretting the confession I’d made. Was no job better than the one I now had?
The barkeep replenished my glass quickly. I’d broken my share of glasses at his establishment when frustrated by a wait.
“Times change,” I continued. “I’m not what you might call patriotic, but I can’t see throwing myself in front of any Ukranian or Chinese goombahs.”
They all nodded grimly. Accepting the change in the game was what it’d come down to for many of them. Globalism happens. Primo gigs were but a memory now, most of ‘em back in the day when I was a young Turk. A guy with enough testosterone to shoot off a few rounds without even pulling my piece. At some point, I’d gotten old. Old, timid, and looking for the soft chair to ease my keister on. Hadn’t I earned it? Everything I knew, which was plenty once, became unimportant as the old administration died off. And, at age fifty or so, I found myself freed from prior obligations. Chased, as men in the trade say.
So my career took a left turn. I began escorting Hollywood celebrities around. Found out I liked hanging at previews, parties, and in trendy bars and restaurants. Discovered I liked eating sushi and getting buff at the gym. Got off on buying clothes at Neiman Marcus or Nordstrom. Picking out my shoes at Ferragamo. Who wouldn’t get tired of red tablecloth fare, leather and gold chains, and the rest of the shit that comes with working for the traditional families for thirty years?
First it was one of those pretty boys from “Friends.” Kid had trouble fending off pansies and my bulky presence persuaded them otherwise. Next came some rapper, can’t remember his name. A model, a wrestler, and a fancy Las Vegas chef paid my rent in the following years. These engagements may not have carried the swank of earlier days, but it put food on my table.
Me and the boyos were sitting in a bar on 52 and 11th when I confessed my new employment. I’d just tucked in Madame X in for the night. She only needed protection at public events so I was footloose a lot of the time. Babysitting X was an odd assignment, one I wasn’t completely copacetic with. Why did a writer at a hoity-toity newspaper need security? She didn’t spell it out right away.
You’re probably thinking the dame was one of those hotshot journalists. But she was no Woodward or Bernstein. She wrote book reviews, for the love of God. What’s a broad like that need protection from? But I wasn’t about to argue with a steady paycheck for a few hours work a week. Hadn’t I been looking for that very thing?
I’d found my way to her apartment a few weeks earlier. She’d called me for a come-in the night before. Minimalist, I think you’d call her place. Not the kinda digs that makes you wanna hang around. I felt dirty just standing outside in the hallway, looking at a flat black door with no knob. She had a mat with rubberized daggers, arched to clean my shoes. It didn’t say WELCOME either.
“Sit down,” she commanded, pointing to a chair across the room.
I looked her over. Madame X was a little squirt; one you could knock over with a sneeze. I remembered thinking the same thing about Ms. Jodie Foster a few years earlier and getting my ass kicked in an impressive demo of her karate skills. Before I handed Jodie my application, she’d handed me my hat. Heard her cackling to herself as I headed out the door.
“So where’s the threat coming from?” I finally asked Madame X.
Probably made some enemies coming up. Those Asian families turn out some pretty rough soldiers. She sat primly on a sofa boasting no stuffing whatsoever, while I squirmed uncomfortably on a slippery metal chair. The kind that makes embarrassing noises if you don’t sit still.
“Someone specific after you?” I asked in desperation. “Stalker maybe?” I could see such a possibility after five minutes with her.
She looked me in the eye. “The danger comes from telling the truth on the front page of the arts section twice a week.” Her mouth was a straight line, her tone brooding. “Nobody can bear to hear it. They think they can, but….” She shook her head.
Frankly, I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about. Arts Section? Truth?
“Reviews,” she said, shaking her head. “I review novels.”
“Who reads reviews anyway?” I asked. Never read one in my life. Nor a book since The Scarlet Letter in tenth grade. By the next year, I’d already figured out how to get other people to read books for me, maybe setting the course for my future occupation.
I guess it made sense. You’d want to hear what people are saying about your book, know the gossip. Most of my former employers bugged the homes, cars and offices of their enemies for such information. I’d often installed the equipment. They never liked their reviews either. But nobody printed it in a newspaper; nobody took out an ad. If anything was repeated at all, it was done on a walk talk.
I could see why people wanted her ass.
“Sit up straight, Lennie. That’s your name, right?” I nodded. She looked me in the eye. “You’ll have to be prepared for the unexpected.”
“I carry a Glock,” I told her, ready to pull it out.
My comare shook her head. “Guns are out of the question. You’ll have to find another way to deal with it.” She frowned, thinking. “You might be able carry a Tazer. I could look into it. I can ask Marilyn. She may know more about such things.”
The only Marilyn I knew was dead: I’d been in the neighborhood that night too.
Seeing my confusion, Madame X clarified it. “Marilyn reviews crime novels.”
I nodded.
“Somebody has to do it,” she said..
She told me stories about getting egged by a guy who wrote books about bears. Another melee happened with a female writer dressed like a chambermaid. She’d let herself into Madame X’s room in a Boston hotel, and hidden under her bed.
“She wanted to prove such stunts were possible,” X told me. “I was incredulous of such a feat in my review the week before.” She laughed. “Then she expected me to print a retraction rather than having her arrested. Guess what?” She had a hardy laugh for a small woman.
This wasn’t really a new gig for me, defending a client from anonymous letters or verbal assault. Throwing myself between her and a well-aimed egg or tomato. I’d seen such tactics in Hollywood. But being on the lookout for people whose main weapon were words or a mouth? What did writers look like anyway?
I went home and pulled up Madame X’s recent work on my computer. Skimmed her reviews from the previous months and saw them littered with words such as “messy, pretentious, clumsy, slight, unsatisfying, maladroit, ridiculous, poorly articulated, sketchily drawn foils.”
My particular favorite read, “An odious self-portrait of the artist as a young jackass.” I won’t say the definition function on my word-processing program didn’t get a good workout in the weeks ahead. She had a mouth on her—that dame.
There were even reviews of her reviews, saying she had no humor or wit, that she decided on the first page to dislike a book. My current comare was a bit of a bitch. They’d even coined a term to describe her reviewing technique: the Madame X Two-Step—where she falsely claimed she’d liked an author’s earlier work before attacking the current one.
“Madame X sits enthroned on the book page of the world’s most influential newspaper.”
Oh, yeah, they hated her pretty good.
In the weeks ahead, I c
ame in for a lot of her criticism.
“Lennie, I’ll require well-written reports at the end of your shifts. Income tax purposes,” she added. “Please use spell-check. I can’t abide spelling errors.” Or. “Lennie, you need to use a better mouthwash. I can smell garlic.” Or “Lennie, you need to be less conspicuous.” She told me this the first time I wore my new burgundy leather jacket. “Lennie, your haircut makes your head look like a bullet.”
I think she took a lot of pleasure out in remarks like that, even enjoyed the hurt look on my face. She gave the same treatment to everyone: maids, hairdressers, secretaries, waiters, salesclerks. Couldn’t leave a room without tossing off a well-worded barb. It was like target practice 24-7.
Still I’d worked for worse. I was used to taking abuse. Being a whipping boy had an expensive price tag. She didn’t balk at paying it.
But there was something nerve-wracking about this gig—it was changing me. For one thing, I started reading the newspaper. How else was I going to find out who her enemies were? I kept a list that grew by two to three names each week. Before I knew it, I was in a store buying a book she’d scorched. I couldn’t picture the guy on the back flap leaving his apartment or even hiring someone to toss her. His book titles, in fact, all sounded like he was getting ready to toss himself.
It was men who came in for her worst attacks.
“She’s particularly harsh on the American male writer, judgmental and censorious,” one critic said. What the fuck!
We were up at the Y one night. Yes, you heard me right. At the Y in the west nineties. In her circles, this particular Y was like Sardis or the Stork Club back in the day. She liked me to fade into the woodwork at public events while still keeping watch. And that was what I was doing, eyeing a bunch of empty suits sidling up to her. This bunch looked like weirdoes in their corduroy pants, smudged glasses and scuffed shoes: people who needed to be chased. But X was smiling, balancing her glass of ginger ale in one hand and a piece of celery in the other. Talking, talking, talking. I never saw her mouth keep still.
Didn’t like the whole setup. No scanner at the door even. At precisely nine o’clock, when she stepped onto the dais, a small man—a real cafone— rushed forward and pushed half a grapefruit into her face. I knocked him down with one swift movement, shielding my boss from any further incidents. The juice dripped from her face, pieces of rind clinging to her hair, but otherwise she was fine. Mopped her own face and soldiered on. Gotta respect that.
I listened carefully to her talk—it was only delayed for a few minutes— listened to her say how her shaping of the American novel was more important than any single writer’s place in literature. Didn’t strike me as right—her saying such a thing. The crowd bristled too. I wondered if I’d need to do another piece of work before the night was over. But the evening concluded peaceful like, and I saw her home.
At a library in Connecticut, not a week later, X was sharing the floor with one of the most “revered writers” in the country—that’s what the host told the audience anyway.
“A literary lion,” he announced, looking around.
The lion was nowhere to be found until I located him in the stacks. It was an old library, and they still had the wooden card catalogs they used when I was a kid. This guy, this scion of American letters, was thumbing through one of the drawers.
“Aren’t you up next?” I asked him, raising a thumb in the right direction. I was also trying to gauge his anger level, seeing if he was a threat.
But he was pretty old, had maybe gotten confused on the night’s mission. I’d seen a lot of guys like him over the years. Men who were famous once but slid. His hair was a seed bed of cowlicks, probably worsened by the huge fur hat sitting on the top of the catalog. One of his gloves was on the floor, and I picked it up. Two of the fingers had holes.
He nodded his thanks. “Just waiting till she’s done,” he said, gesturing toward the main room with his head and shivering. “Look,” he said, holding up a card. “Someone took this one out only last month.”
I looked at the card and nodded. Poor guy was checking on his own books. It was pathetic, and just the sort of thing X drove writers to do. A tear coursed down his cheek and he held up another.
“Not since 1996,” he said. “Too bad. About a minister,” he said. “Should’ve known religious men have a short shelf life.”
“People don’t read much anymore,” I said, trying to console him.
“Well, they don’t read me much thanks to critics like her,” he said, thrusting his head toward in boss’ direction again. Guy was a broken man and my employer was to blame. How many men or women had she ruined? The night ended badly for the writer, who turned speechless in the presence of my boss. On the way home, she exulted in her performance, repeated how the man had cowered at her feet. I didn’t say a word.
Nobody suspected me when she was found choked to death in her apartment. She was telling me about the proper length for men’s trousers when I grabbed her. She choked on her own words, some might say. The last word out of her mouth was “derivative” if I heard her right.
The list of suspects was long. I’d chosen a means of death almost anyone could execute on a woman of ninety pounds. Only heat I took was from the fellows at the bar who laughed themselves sick over my inability to protect a woman. I didn’t let them in on it, of course.
“Remember the day he threw himself on that Capo di Tutti capi in Jersey,” Baldy said. “Saved his balls.” They laughed even harder. “Those were the days,” he finished.
I didn’t care. I ‘d thrown myself on a Capo di Tutti capi at that library catalogue in Connecticut in effect. Just not the one who’d hired me.
CATNAP
Melissa was headed for the food court when she spotted a promising stringy-haired blonde circling the information kiosk. Wearing a knee-length plum coat with matted fur trim, the woman staggered under the weight of a snow-suited baby. A toddler in green overalls dangled tearfully from her other hand. Was the blonde looking for someone, Melissa wondered? Would a muscular father suddenly spring into view, screwing things up?
No such savior approached, and Melissa's pulse slowed when the blonde finally spotted the ticket windows and stepped into the closest line. The toddler’s fussing grew steadily louder, and heads turned as holiday travelers attempted to locate the source of the noise. The blonde carried a knapsack on her back and a bulging diaper bag on her shoulder. Overburdened and drowning beneath the carapace of motherhood, she was the perfect pigeon as Melissa’s father would’ve pointed out. Melissa waited within earshot, willing the children to calm down, watching to see if interest in the cacophony subsided. She had a good feeling about this little group. It was the most promising moment in weeks.
The blonde, close to frantic now, found two lollipops in her pocket and peeled off the cellophane with shaking hands. The crying stopped, and heads gradually turned away as a train announcement caught their interest. Standing behind the family a second later, Melissa attracted the baby's attention by putting her hands up for peek-a-boo. It took nearly a minute before the blonde noticed, and by this time the baby was won over and playing right along, smiling with ear-to-ear grins, the forgotten red lollipop stuck to the pile on her snowsuit.
"You got a way with her," the woman said. "She don't smile for just anybody." She had a slight lisp, which suited her baby doll looks.
"She's just soooo cute." The word “cute” stuck to Melissa’s tongue like something sticky on a shoe. “Could probably be in commercials.”
"Yeah, but she weighs a ton." To demonstrate, the mother bounced the baby on her forearms.
Melissa clucked her tongue sympathetically as the woman shifted her wiggling burden from one hip to the other. "How old is she?"
"Ten and a half months."
"Wow!" Melissa searched uselessly for the proper response.
"Always pick the wrong line," the woman said. “Doesn’t matter where. Grocery store, post office.” Glancing down at her ol
der child, she bleated. "Cut that out, Jade! The little girl was twisting her mother's arm as she ducked under it again and again. Dropping it, Jade scowled ferociously up at Melissa, intuiting something perhaps.
"Mine's not for an hour," Melissa said, trying to regain the blonde's attention. "My train, that is. I always get here way too early." She shrugged, trying to appear as ineffectual as the blonde.
"Well, ours is coming up. We’d have been here sooner, but Jade peed on her Christmas dress." The little girl—Jade— was twirling again and her mother's hand grabbed her arm. "Sit down before you wet another outfit."
“Half an hour,” Melissa returned to the pertinent subject, “Gonna be tough. Line hasn’t moved.”
“You’re telling me! Jade here—she’s got herself an irritable bladder.”
“Uh, oh,” Melissa said again. Should she claim a similarly affected sister? What was it called again?
The kid caught Melissa’s eye just then, shooting her a suspicious look. Uneasily, Melissa turned back to the mother. She couldn’t let a…a— however old she was— fuck it up!
Slumping with exhaustion, the blonde let the diaper bag slide down her arm where it dropped to the floor. “Weighs a frigging ton! I got Christmas presents for my mom and sisters in that bag—plus all the usual shit.” She pushed the bag dispiritedly with the scuffed toe of her high-heeled boot as the line inched forward.
The little girl immediately threw herself on the bag, prodding it with a mittened hand. “Mom!” she scolded in an oddly gruff voice. “Nana’s Jean Nate’s in there!”
Christ, did they still make that stuff, Melissa wondered? The blonde shrugged, but looked worriedly at the bag.
“It’s okay Mom,” Jade said, pulling a package wrapped with blue Santa paper out. She held it up to reassure her mother. The baby began to fuss, holding out a hand for the package. But, after kissing it lavishly, Jade slid it back in the bag, wrinkling her nose at her sister.