One Hit Wonder

by Charlie Carillo

  “Is it my fault that the peacocks made a mess on the lawn? Is it? Nobody told me they were such messy birds!”

  “Mrs. Weintraub—”

  “He’s blaming me for this peacock fiasco!” she ranted. “Does that sound fair to you?”

  “No, not at all.”

  Her eyes narrowed slightly as she whispered, “He’s got girlfriends. Two that I know of.”

  She wiped her eyes, set her jaw. A fresh light came to her face. It was an amazing thing to see. Just like that, she was through feeling bad, one of those rare people who can actually decide to stop feeling bad and do something about it.

  Eva Weintraub took me by the wrist. “Follow me,” she said, though there wasn’t really any choice in the matter as she dragged me into the house and up the stairs and into a bedroom overlooking the lawn party. She let go of my wrist, reached under her dress, removed her panties, tossed them aside, put her hands on the windowsill and spread her feet.

  With all the emotion of a drive-in customer speaking her fast food order into the clown’s mouth at McDonald’s, she looked over her shoulder and said:

  “If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like you to fuck me from behind while I watch my husband as I’m betraying him.”

  I swear, those were her very words. It was as if she’d read them off a teleprompter. She even handed me a condom.

  “Mrs. Weintraub, I don’t think—”

  “For God’s sake, you’re about to nail me doggie-style! Do you think you could call me Eva?”

  “Eva…this isn’t such a good idea. “

  “If you don’t do it, I’ll scream ‘rape.’ Okay? Who are they going to believe, you or me?”

  She meant it. She really meant it. And she was right. Who were they going to believe? The one with the better lawyer, that’s who.

  “Eva,” I said, “this is crazy.”

  “I agree with you, but I’m very, very angry, and this is what I do when I’m angry.”

  “It’s not what I do.”

  She laughed. “You followed me up here, didn’t you? Where did you think we were going? What did you think we were going to do?”

  “I’m leaving, Mrs. Weintraub. Thank you for—”

  “Oh, we’re back to Mrs. Weintraub, eh?”

  She got that look in her eye, the look a woman gets when she’s about to drive home the dagger.

  “My husband didn’t want you here. He said to me, and I quote: ‘Get a real star for Eliott’s party. Who remembers that loser?’”

  She was good. She knew which buttons to push. She was the kind of woman who always got what she went after, but never what she wanted. There was a lot of that in the City of Angels.

  “So,” she crooned, “are you a loser, like my husband says?”

  I let the words bite into my twisted soul, and then I rubbered up and rode her from behind while she stared out the window and fogged up the double-pane windows with her heaving breaths as she cried the words, “Oh, Peter, you sack of shit, he’s bigger than you, he’s better than you!”

  She urged me to fuck her harder. I did as I was told, and it was certainly the angriest hump of my life, rougher and rowdier than anything she expected. She’d lit a fuse without expecting quite this big an explosion, knowing nothing of the rage I carried inside.

  Her face bumped the glass. She turned to look at me, rubbing her forehead.

  “Hey, cowboy!”

  “Huh?”

  “Take it down a notch. And put the yarmulke back on.”

  In my excitement I’d taken the yarmulke off my head and clenched it in my fist. I smoothed it out, put it back on, and finished the ride with a kosher flourish.

  Given his sexual preferences, I’d guess that Elton couldn’t have done what I’d done, could he?

  Eva Weintraub stepped back into her panties while I zipped up and tucked in.

  “Do I owe you for the additional service?” she asked, sounding serious.

  I shook my head. I didn’t even want to look at her. “We’re square.”

  “I want you to see something before you go, Nicky.”

  “It’s Mickey.”

  “Whatever.”

  She went to a closet and took out a rifle, which she seemed to handle like an expert. I froze at the sight of it.

  “Jesus!”

  “I take target practice twice a week. I’m actually quite a good shot.” She chuckled. “Any crackhead who tries to break into my room is going to be one sorry schvartze.”

  She opened the windows wide. Sounds of the party drifted inside. I moved to grab the rifle but she was quick as a cat, turning to point it at my chest. I backed off, hands held high.

  She turned to the window, pointed the gun toward the lawn and pulled the trigger. The boom shook the room. I expected to see her husband collapse, but instead a peacock fell over dead in an explosion of blue feathers.

  Eva giggled. “He’s upset because they’re shitting all over the lawn, eh?” she said. “Well, I can fix that.”

  Another shot, another dead peacock. People were screaming, fleeing in all directions. The infamous Beverly Hills Peacock Massacre had begun.

  “Mrs. Weintraub, stop!”

  I moved to get the rifle once again, and this time she stunned me by belting me on the jaw with the butt of the gun, just like John Wayne in the movies. We were, after all, in Hollywood.

  I went down, seeing stars. She continued firing out the window.

  “Nothing but peacocks!” she cried, and she was good to her word. Not a single human being got shot.

  I got to my feet, staggered down the stairs and out the front door. The shots continued to ring out, along with a wail of sirens in the distance—someone had called 911. I got my ass out of there as fast as I could.

  I read all about it in the papers the next day. After I fled, Eva Weintraub apparently locked the bedroom door and continued to bring down one bird after another. One anonymous police source marveled at her marksmanship.

  Peacocks are apparently pretty stupid. After the first few shots all the people had fled from the lawn but the birds continued to mill about, oblivious to the slaughter. Their wings had been clipped to keep them from flying away, making Eva’s mission that much easier. By the time cops in riot gear broke down the bedroom door and subdued her she’d killed seventeen of the twenty-four hired birds.

  BAR MITZVAH BLOODBATH, screamed one headline. Peter Weintraub issued a statement saying that his wife had been under “extreme emotional duress” of late and that the pressures of preparing for their son’s bar mitzvah had taken a toll. There was nothing about his complaints regarding peacock shit all over the lawn, and how this had triggered his wife’s bloody rampage.

  On top of a substantial bird rental fee, the dead peacocks were valued at $500 apiece, costing Peter Weintraub an additional $8500. In a master stroke of chutzpah, Weintraub had the slain birds plucked, cleaned, roasted, and shipped to a soup kitchen in downtown L.A., where the homeless dined on what had to have been the most expensive poultry in history.

  “I just couldn’t bear the thought of it all going to waste,” Peter Weintraub was quoted as saying.

  TV crews were there to record it all, as people with hardly any teeth got their teeth into roasted peacock.

  “It’s a little gamey,” commented one finicky bag lady.

  By the time all the lawyering was done, Eva Weintraub pleaded guilty to charges of cruelty to animals in exchange for a suspended sentence and community service. About six months later Peter Weintraub was in the headlines for attempting to claim an $8500 charitable deduction on his income taxes for donating the roasted peacocks to the homeless shelter. The deduction was disallowed, and several months after that the Weintraubs quietly divorced.

  My name never came up in any of the stories. I was both grateful and, in a funny way, disappointed. I think that’s when I first realized my musical career was in serious decline. I was just the piano player, trying his best to earn an honest buck. From then on, I
vowed to myself, I would never again play at a birthday party. It was a vow I was able to keep, until my mother went and volunteered me to sing at the party for the dying Kavanagh boy.

  Eileen Kavanagh made a brisk living as Little Neck’s top real estate agent. It wasn’t easy to bully a person like my mother, but even she was intimidated by this powerhouse of a woman. Old Eileen organized blood drives and church picnics. She stopped people on the street to ask why she hadn’t seen them at mass recently. She was an absolute pain in the ass, married to a shadow of a man whose hunched shoulders told the story of his life. He’d died six months earlier (as I’d learned when I first bumped into Eileen upon my return to Little Neck) and I imagine he hadn’t struggled much to try and stay alive.

  Eileen had a son named Eugene who was my age. I’d gone to school with him but I’d barely known him. He’d been a straight-A student with his father’s bland personality. Eugene had a successful dental practice, a house in Little Neck, a loyal wife, and a son who was dying of leukemia.

  I actually wore a jacket and tie to the birthday party, as if I were attending the boy’s funeral. It was clothing I hadn’t worn since high school, but it fit me pretty well. I was losing weight fast, pushing that lawn mower.

  Eugene answered the door. The years had been brutal to him. He had his father’s hunched shoulders, a potbelly, and an almost totally bald head. There was a fringe of hair around his ears, but that was it. If his son got past his illness and lived, he’d probably have male pattern baldness to deal with.

  What an ugly thought! A bolt of shame shot through me, and I actually shivered at my own cruelty. Eugene shook my hand awkwardly, the way you do when you’ve known someone your whole life without being their friend.

  “Mickey. Long time no see.”

  “Hey, Eugene.”

  “Come in, come in.”

  The living room was crammed with people eating birthday cake off paper plates. “There he is!” exclaimed Eileen Kavanagh, chubby as a partridge in a snug green dress. She wore a trumpet lily corsage that got crushed as she hugged me, then dragged me to the other side of the room. I felt a lot of eyes on me, the eyes of the kids’ mothers. Most of them were the right age to remember me. One doe-eyed woman stood before me in apparent awe. Eileen put an arm across her shoulders.

  “This,” she announced, “is my beautiful daughter-in-law, Karen, who somehow fell in love with my son over there.”

  She jerked her head toward poor Eugene, caught spooning cake into his mouth. He offered a goofy grin through a chocolate icing mustache.

  I shook hands with Eugene’s wife, who held on damply as she breathlessly managed to say, “I love your song.”

  Something funny was going on. I shook hands with more people as Eileen introduced me around (“I’ve known him since he could walk!”), and Eugene’s wife couldn’t take her eyes off me, but where the fuck was the sick kid? I figured he must have been up in his room, hooked up to various life support devices. Maybe I’d have to sing to him through a surgical mask….

  “Everybody!” said Eileen, clutching my wrist as if she feared I might otherwise fly away. “Listen up, please, listen up—the one and only Mickey DeFalco is here to wish our Steven a happy birthday!”

  The mothers cheered, the husbands patted their hands together politely, and Eileen went to a sliding glass door that opened onto the backyard.

  “Steven!” she bellowed like a drill sergeant. “Steven Kavanagh, front and center!”

  I braced myself for the sight of a bony, bald-headed kid with haunted eyes tottering into the house. Instead, the healthiest-looking eleven-year-old I’d ever seen came bounding inside, red-faced and breathless. He’d obviously been interrupted mid-game and was eager to return to his friends, who were chucking a football around in the yard.

  “Steven, say hello to Mr. DeFalco.”

  “Hello.”

  “Say it nicely.”

  “Hello.”

  I studied the boy for signs of impending death. There were dark circles under his eyes, but I could tell they were fading. His eyes were clear. He was well nourished, maybe even a little overweight. He was eager to get back to the game, but his grandmother had other ideas.

  “Mr. DeFalco is going to sing to you for your birthday.”

  Steven rolled his eyes. “Now?”

  “In a minute…oh, go on, go back to your game, I’ll call you when it’s time.”

  Steven dashed back outside, to much laughter all around. I used the commotion to pull Eileen aside.

  “Is that the sick kid?”

  “He’s a lot better now, thank God.” She crossed herself. “Would you like some cake?”

  “No, thank you….”

  The mothers had gathered around the piano in the living room. They were waiting for me, and I noticed they had sheets of paper in their hands, with photographs of houses on them. I saw the words “Kavanagh Realty” at the tops of the pages.

  Holy Christ. Good old Eileen was using her doomed grandson’s birthday party to drum up a little business. That’s why I was there, to help lure the suckers into the tent.

  I was too stunned to be angry. Eileen grabbed my wrist again and tried to haul me to the piano, but I held my ground like a mule, then pulled her over to a corner.

  “Mrs. Kavanagh, is your grandson actually dying?”

  “Shhh! Lower your voice!”

  I lowered my voice. “My mother told me he was dying of leukemia, and he wanted to hear me sing. Is that the way it is?”

  Her nostrils flared. She took a deep breath and said, “Steven had a serious blood disease.”

  “Had?”

  “He seems to have overcome it now.”

  “What’s the disease?”

  Eileen forced a cruel chuckle. “So many questions, Mickey! I wasn’t aware that you’d been to medical school.”

  “As we both know, I’m a high school dropout. But that doesn’t mean I’m an idiot. Please tell me what’s wrong with Steven.”

  A sigh of surrender. “He had mono.”

  “Mono? You mean mononucleosis?”

  “Yes, and it was touch-and-go for a while there.”

  Mononucleosis. Mono-fucking-nucleosis. The kissing disease. You stayed home from school for a few weeks reading comic books, and it went away.

  This mess wasn’t my mother’s fault. This was all Eileen. I guess she was so used to bullshitting people to sell houses—exaggerating the square footage, lying about competitive bids that didn’t even exist—that the habit spilled over into her personal life. She wanted to make a splash at her grandson’s birthday party, and once she knew I was back in town, I became the splash.

  So she did what she had to do to get me there. What was I going to do, walk out? She knew I wouldn’t. She’d conned my mother, and she had me roped and tied.

  The least I could do was try and loosen the ropes.

  “Tell me something, Mrs. Kavanagh. Has anybody ever actually died of mono?”

  “I can’t answer that question, Mickey. If this is going to get unpleasant, I can offer you money for your musical efforts.”

  “Forget it, forget it. I overrreacted. I’m sorry.” I gave her my best puppy-in-the-rain look. “I’d like to sing now, if that’s all right.”

  She smiled at me, a smile rich with triumph. “You were always a good boy.”

  “Oh, well, you know….”

  I sat at the piano and flexed my fingers while Steven and his birthday guests were summoned from outside, a dozen hot, sweaty, hard-breathing kids eager to return to their game. Their mothers were in my face, at my back, at my elbows. I barely had room to play.

  “Steven,” I said, “I have a special song for you on your birthday, and I hope you enjoy it.”

  I cracked my knuckles, took a deep breath, and did what I had to do.

  I sang “Happy Birthday.” Badly.

  The kid stared at me, sweat rolling down his cheeks. He looked at his friends. They all burst out laughing and ran back outside
. I rose from the piano, took a bow, and headed for the door, amid a million murmurs.

  Eileen caught up with me on the front porch.

  “Mickey. What the hell was that?”

  I shrugged in mock innocence. “I sang ‘Happy Birthday’ for his birthday. It is his birthday, isn’t it? Or did you make up that part, too?”

  “Come back and sing ‘Sweet Days’!”

  “I can’t. I’m forbidden by law.”

  “What?”

  “I sold the rights to my song years ago. I’m forbidden from performing it anywhere.”

  “Oh, come on!”

  “It’s the truth. I’m not allowed to sing it anymore.”

  The part about selling the rights was true, but the rest was bullshit, and she knew it. Her face darkened.

  “You’re full of shit,” she hissed.

  “Look who’s talking.”

  Five minutes later I was home.

  “How’d it go?” my mother wanted to know.

  “Great.”

  “Didn’t take very long, did it?”

  “No, Mom, it didn’t.”

  “And don’t you feel good? Isn’t it nice to do something special for a child in need?”

  “It sure is, Mom.”

  I wondered if Eileen was going to tell my mother what had happened. I doubted it. If she told her what I had done, she’d also have to tell her what she had done to inspire my behavior. I couldn’t help smiling. It was the perfect crime.

  I went upstairs and changed into jeans and a T-shirt. The phone was ringing, and I had to marvel over Mrs. Kavanagh’s brass balls—calling to complain about me after all, despite the scam she’d concocted to get me there.

  I went downstairs, where my solemn mother awaited my arrival. She handed me a folded slip of paper.

  “You just had a call from a girl,” she said.

  My heart soared. Lynn had come to her senses.

  “Were you at least polite to her, Mom?”

  She gave me an odd smile. “I’m always polite,” she said over her shoulder as she walked away.

  My hands shook as I unfolded the paper, expecting to see the one phone number I still knew by heart, but it was a number I didn’t know, beneath a name that I did know, written in my mother’s flawless Catholic school script: Rosalind Pomer.