Snitch Jacket

by Christopher Goffard

  Scabronis stood in the doorway, scowling like a terrifying demon.

  ‘Stop skulking there by the sink! We have an emergency.’

  ‘I’m not skulking, Mr. Scabronis.’

  ‘Grab the plunger from the supply closet. A mop, a bucket! Put the “Out of Order” sign on the Caballeros’ room. There’s shit everywhere. Make it unshitty. Ten minutes!’

  ‘Why me? I’m a dishwasher.’

  ‘Because I don’t have anyone on the payroll called“shit boy”!’

  ‘Why can’t the Mexicans do it?’

  ‘Don’t argue with me!’

  Emergency, it turned out, was close to the right word for the situation. Turds were hanging in inch-deep water all over the floor, like some strange breed of shrimp. I waded cursing into the turdscape, wishing earthquakes and dengue fever on everyone. The tidal disruption created by my step jostled the turds, which rotated sluggishly in their places and sloshed up against my shoes. At the toilet I found the source of the problem.

  Now, Zapata! Zapata! is a classy place, as I’ve said, and customers shouldn’t need a sign that says ‘Don’t Cram Paper Towels In the Bowl.’ Nevertheless some self-centered patron had done exactly that, despite the availability of two rolls of high-quality ass paper in this very stall. It could only have been Table 17.

  Steeped in feces, raising the plunger over the stopped bowl like some kind of Excalibur-liberating Arthur in humiliating reverse, I knew my degradation was complete and that my attempt at balancing the scales of justice in the universe were forever doomed to backfire.

  At this moment, however, a vision visited me. The blonde with the V-neck reminded me of someone. I thought of the enchanting way she kept her hair, pinned demurely under that hair band

  . . . like someone . . . like her . . . exactly like her. Go ahead, say the name. It hurts, but say it: Gwen Stacy. Oh, Jesus. Gwen! Gwendolyn! Yes, you were the blonde I sought amid this morning’s cacophony of dream-trains. It was you I was supposed to leave with.

  I never talked about it to anyone, but I was not ashamed to admit you were the first woman I loved. I believed I was over you, and then here you came, ambushing me, reminding me that it was your shape gaping in the center of my heart, like a Wile E. Coyote silhouette punched in a rock. You were my missing piece. My poor, sweet Gwendy.

  You weren’t my girlfriend. You should have been. But you were Peter Parker’s, a guy often as lonely and confused as I, a guy, like me, who trafficked in secret identities. I admired how you treated him, adored him, sassed him just enough. An all-around terrific lady: sweet, compassionate, busty, pert-nosed, prone to floods of sudden tears, a lover of mini-skirts and tall leather boots and snug sweaters, which you somehow wore with total innocence, a worrier, a sweet ruminator by windows, a girl possessed of incredibly long, elegant eyelashes, and of course more flawlessly managed hair than a salonful of average girls could ever grow. Your style was urban hip, and your soul was Little House on the Prairie; your body a porn star’s, and your smile pure Sesame Street sunshine. You could have been a centerfold superbitch, considering how fine you looked, but you weren’t, you weren’t! You didn’t quite know what everyone else saw in you, which only made us love you more, love you to the point of unbearability.

  You died when I was 12 years old. They assassinated you in Amazing Spider-Man no. 121, in June 1973. For exactly 20 cents spent at a Van Nuys drugstore, I bought a broken heart, an awareness of human evil, and an adult’s sense of death’s finality and indiscriminate reach.

  The writer – artist team of Gerry Conway and Gil Kane did you in via the Green Goblin. The Goblin: a reptilian freak in ghoulface and green tights who zipped around Manhattan on a batshaped glider, hurling exploding pumpkins. Who could take him seriously? Who would expect he’d bring death to the Silver Age Marvel universe, where entire city blocks could be annihilated in superhero clashes without a single casualty, where the characters you loved – particularly the hero’s sweet, statuesque girlfriend, who existed mostly to be put in peril and rescued, particularly her – could always be expected to come through alive? Where the dead inevitably returned a few issues later, with the explanation that only an android simulacrum or alternate-universe impostor had bought it? Nobody was trained to expect the real thing, death of the no-take-back variety. But the Goblin, crazed with hatred, snatched you up on his glider and carried you to the top of the Brooklyn Bridge and, while your boyfriend watched helplessly in his bright action leotard, sent you plunging into the abyss with all of your beautiful hair soaring behind you. By some miracle Mr. S was able to catch you before you hit the water – a cable of webbing snagging one of your stunningly tall leather boots, SWIK! – but the sudden jolt broke your neck. And in case anyone missed the point, there it was, the sickening sound effect, diligently incorporated into the panel: SNAP! Thank you, Gerry Conway! Thank you, Gil Kane! They never found the usual pretexts to resurrect you. There you were in Spidey’s arms, gorgeous in death. Unmarked. Perfect cheekbones and full lips. Amazingly, the fall did not even dislodge your hair band. But forever dead. And while the webslinger went on to Mary Jane Watson, the sweet, statuesque brunette who has sustained the hero through many adventures, who continued to be put in peril and rescued, I stayed with you, the original Cool Chick – achingly. It felt disloyal, to try to get over you, and I was nothing if not loyal. But it still felt slightly morbid, to brandish the Lubriderm with your picture in my lap. I mean, you were dead. For one, it was kind of sick; for another, my feelings were too complicated. So for self-abuse sessions I usually stuck to Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman; Storm, goddess of the elements; or She-Hulk, the big, green, chick hulk. But I had to admit there was very little love in it with those ladies.

  I’m getting off track. Sorry, Goins.

  When I finished mopping up the Caballeros’ room, I headed back to the kitchen, sunk in gloomy brooding, wishing I hadn’t remembered the dream. True Love was the train I was missing, and it had long since left the station.

  At the sink it was clear I’d lost my mojo. My movements were arthritically slow. I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t even care if Scabronis came in and fired me. It would be the third job I’d lost this year. Rick and Alfonse noticed the ferocity had gone out of my dishwashing. Rick said, ‘Holmes? You okay, holmes? Coño?’

  The Gwen Stacy story wasn’t the kind of thing you wanted to share with Rick and Alfonse, despite their philosophical nature. So I said, ‘I saw this puta out there who reminded me of this other puta I knew who died.’

  They nodded. They let me be for the rest of my shift, respecting that. They understood these things. They had been there too, probably. But I was immediately ashamed of myself for having sold out my goddess, just to be one of them.

  Because you were anything but a puta, Gwen.

  I decided I wouldn’t call you that again, no matter what the circumstances.

  Scabronis waited till my shift was over – till I had mopped up all the shit and washed all the dishes – before coming in to sack me. Someone had seen me sabotage the mole con pollo; someone had ratted. Scabronis screamed something in Greek, and every muscle in his face seemed to twitch with anger. He peeled off a few fives and tens, the last of my pay, and thrust them at me. Sneering, I balled up my filthy apron and surrendered it with a shrug to the goatfucker’s hairy hands. Rick and Alfonse looked sorry for me, but kept turning away nervously.

  As I pedaled away, I realized how relieved I was, that I’d probably asked for it. But soon another feeling overtook me, a sick feeling of cowardice, and I cursed myself for not telling Scabronis exactly what I thought of him. Then I decided I should have tried lying my way out of trouble – blaming the Mexicans if I had to – because now I’d have to scrounge for another job. And tell my wife.

  CHAPTER 9

  As I came down the hall toward our apartment I could already hear the canned laughter from Donna’s sitcom.

  A big girl, roomy hips, ample all around, Donna sat smoking Virginia Slims on the c
ouch in purple sweats, her bare feet propped on our mini-trampoline, which collected junk like every other available surface: piles of clothes, my heaps of Fate magazine and Marvel comics, her heaps of People and Cosmo, my shoeboxes overflowing with leaves of old Build a Brobdingnagian Vocabulary! and William F. Buckley Word-A-Day calendars.

  ‘Scabronis sacked me,’ I said.

  ‘What you do?’

  ‘Somebody put some laxatives in a dude’s food, and it’s me who gets it.’

  ‘Why’d you mess with some dude’s food?’

  ‘I didn’t say it was me.’

  ‘Genius, Benny! Because we’re not broke enough!’

  She shook her head slowly and seethed, refusing to look at me until I had promised six or seven times that I’d find another job soon. But her mood was permanently soured. Finally she said, ‘Did you get my thing?’

  For a few days, she’d been asking me to pick up a pink inhaler at the Thrifty pharmacy. Again I’d forgotten.

  She said, ‘What am I gonna do now, I have an attack?’

  ‘Use the orange inhaler.’

  ‘Orange is medium-strength. What if it’s a maximum-strength attack?’

  ‘Maybe you can use the orange one twice.’

  Now she glared. She’d explained this to me before and couldn’t believe I’d forget again. My selective memory infuriated her. I could remember Rod Carew’s year-by-year batting averages, but not a thing as important as her medication. All evidence, she believed, of how I didn’t love her like I should.

  ‘You want me to be a sitting duck when the big one comes?’ she said. ‘You’d be happy if I up and died, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’m in no condition to run there myself, or I would.’

  It’s true that for years I had allowed myself to entertain fantasies of life after her demise, of all the sympathy that would come my way: There goes Benny Bunt. Know his story? Poor man lost his missus. Deserves a drink. Look at that sorry-ass bike he gets around on. Smart guy, too: knows stuff. ’Course he never did zilch with himself. Wife like that . . .

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said again, grabbing a Coors and plonking sore-footed onto the couch. Grudgingly she heated up a couple of Hungry Man salisbury steaks and carried them over on TV trays. We ate while the tube gibbered, one sitcom rerun bleeding into another. This show, like the one before it, involved a dysfunctional family whose members spent their time insulting each other wittily. The canned laughers loved it. They loved every joke, right on cue.

  Canned laughter always made me think of suicide, the logic of it, even the inevitability of it. Maybe the laughers were suicides themselves. Maybe that’s their punishment: banishment to a place where you have to laugh at everything, like a rat leg twitching obediently under the kiss of electricity.

  Donna surfed to a syndicated courthouse drama and said, ‘Look at that skinny bitch pretending to be a lawyer. You can see the ribs sticking through her dress, like some kind of Ethiopian. That’s what’s supposed to be hot these days. Would you like a piece of that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Of course you would, if you could snag someone in that league. You’d have to be able to hang on to a job first.’

  ‘I’m not attracted to her.’

  ‘Win the lotto, get a Vette: you’d be porking Lady Skeletor in a New York minute. Because if a woman doesn’t have petite little titties, and nibble two pieces of iceberg lettuce a day, and sneak off and puke it up so her teeth rot out of her head, and no fun in life at all, well, nobody wants her.’ She scowled at me. ‘Benny, you make me so – so insecure.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Despite her raft of meds, Donna was always phlegmy, her nostrils miserably red-rimmed and leaking snot. Our apartment was full of things that made her sneeze and choke: molds in the ceiling, dust mites, roaches. Me? I couldn’t spend 20 minutes at home without a constriction of the lungs, for reasons having nothing to do with molds and mites. Yes, as I sat here in my own home, my castle, my sanctuary, the smoke-choked tightness of the Greasy Tuesday loomed in my mind like a big gulp of ocean oxygen.

  After an hour on the couch I stood and said, ‘I need a drink.’

  ‘You’ve had a drink. A couple of drinks! And I haven’t seen you all day.’

  ‘My day’s been about as kind as cancer. I really need – – ’

  ‘Jesus! What kind of husband are you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘But I know. I know what kind.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘What’s gonna happen when you drink yourself to death?’

  I sat down. She produced a magazine and insisted we take a psychology quiz. Stupidly I submitted to the trap. I tried to answer the questions in a way that wouldn’t get me in trouble. She would read a word, and I was supposed to say the first thing that came to mind. When she said ‘Sea,’ I answered, ‘Drown.’ When she said ‘Coffee,’ I said, ‘First you’re nervous, then you shit.’

  We got through those two questions before she threw the magazine at me. ‘“Sea” is what you think of your marriage,’ she snarled. ‘“Coffee” is what you think of your sex life.’ She concluded that I didn’t love her, that in fact I wanted to push her under a bus and fuck a lot of skinny TV bitches, and she cried. I couldn’t leave while she was crying, so I decided to wait out the waterworks. When her face seemed to be drying I said, ‘I really need a drink.’

  ‘Take me to Target, baby,’ she pleaded.

  ‘I thought you were in no condition to go – – ’

  ‘Target is therapy. It’s different.’

  ‘You can’t drink at Target. You go. I’ll go to the bar.’

  ‘I thought we were a couple. Couples do things together.’

  ‘A drink is all I can think of after a day like today.’

  ‘Take me to the bar then.’

  ‘It’s no place for ladies. All those creeps eyefucking you.’

  ‘Maybe I like being eyefucked. Maybe it makes me feel desired.’

  ‘I’d get stabbed, defending your honor.’

  ‘You’re a liar. You’re just ashamed to be seen with me. We have no quality time.’

  ‘Fucking is quality time. Why don’t we have more of that kind of quality time instead of Target quality time?’

  She looked aghast, like I’d just slapped her. And I was immediately ashamed I’d said it; I hurt her. But I couldn’t always mask my fury at the state of things. The last time it looked like we might enjoy conjugal relations was three or four months ago. I’d just applied some ointment to my hemorrhoids and climbed into bed when Donna, in a rare good mood, announced, ‘We should try to do it.’ Suddenly her tongue was slurping at my eardrum and her hand tugging at my joint, and I thought: Yes! Terrific! Here we go. Why a man marries! I put a few of my fingers in her mouth to suck. She gagged and seized them, holding them under her nose. Her expression was savage. ‘Preparation H goes on with a Q-tip, you stupid shit! You just don’t care at all about trying to make it nice for me!’ I spent the rest of the night trying to coax a sobbing Donna out of the bathroom.

  The tear-tap was open again now, gushing hot streamlets down her cheeks to pool in the adipose folds of her neck. No pleasure in that for me, none at all. ‘I’m your wife, and you speak to me like a hooker!’

  ‘You just said – eyefuc – – ’

  ‘You’d be happy if my arteries just up and quit and killed me, wouldn’t you? Well, one day they will, and then you’ll see. I’m a waste of space anyway, if you ask me how my husband makes me feel.’

  ‘Why do we – I mean, why do – – ’

  Why do we keep on like this? is what I wanted to ask.

  ‘You know the problem with our relationship?’ she screamed. ‘You’re only half here emotionally, Benny! You’re married to your comics and your pot and your booze! You don’t know a fucking thing about love and commitment! About making a person feel special! Not the first basic principle!’

  I felt the urge to
do something dramatic. Upend that stupid trampoline, for instance, send junk flying across the room. Smash a plate or two against the wall, to make the point that I could only be pushed so far. Some kind of primal Ed-Harris-as-Jackson-Pollock scene is what I had in mind. But I was not the kind of man who did those sorts of things. Donna knew this. I couldn’t pull it off. And besides, I worried too much about her condition to risk that kind of gesture. But I needed to get out. Out! Into the cool tobacco dark and encompassing gin fumes of my favorite dive.

  ‘I really have to go, sweetheart,’ I said.

  I heard her orange inhaler clatter against the door as I fled.

  CHAPTER 10

  You want to know how a man finds himself in such a cage, don’t you, Goins? Alright, I’ll rewind. We met at the movie theater, Donna and I. She worked in the ticket-booth at the old Mesa Grand and I came every Tuesday night for the $1 feature. I loved that old theater, even with its wobbly uneven seats and springs jutting through the upholstery and the floor sticky with Pepsi; I felt comfortable there, at one with its blue-collar scrappiness. You got an entire row to yourself, nobody was better than you, and the audience appreciated it when you told an actor what you thought of him.

  On the night I saw Leaving Las Vegas, Donna slipped me a ticket and said, ‘This movie sucks, but there’s a couple hot sex scenes in it,’ and I have to admit, it was the first time I really noticed her. I had been seeing her for months and not really seeing her, the way people can stand next to a certain kind of wallpaper forever without the pattern ever registering. I loved her frankness and vulgarity. It was just my speed. And her smile, wide, generous, and toothy: there seemed to be something lusty and personal in it for me. I kept thinking of the roomy dimensions of her mouth. That week I came back to the theater five times, to see everything on the marquee. Afterward I’d drop by the booth to hear her tell me in her sassy, cheerful voice how much what I’d just seen sucked.