“Why?” I wondered.
He hemmed and hawed, mumbling something about small puncture wounds and the dead woman’s blood.
“Why?” I repeated.
“AIDS!” he flushed red.
I let him look at the whole hand. He bathed and toweled it and poured what might’ve been hydrogen peroxide over it to see if any white foam would bubble up. None did. We agreed that testing for leaks in an inner tube was much easier and that I should have a real doctor check it out. He said he’d tell the cops to run an HIV test on the corpse, but that he couldn’t guarantee they’d listen. I winked my understanding and thanks. He flushed again and planted the hot coffee in my mitts.
“Mr. Klein?” a throaty woman’s voice questioned already knowing the answer.
“Yeah,” I spoke not to the woman at my back, but to the cup in my lap.
“I’m Kate Barnum from the Sound Hill Whaler.”
“Great,” I lifted my head off the bar, placing the cheap chinaware in its place. The scratchy blanket slid to the floor again. “Just what I needed, the press.”
“Here,” the reporter fumbled with the blanket, trying to juggle it with her mini-recorder, pad and pen.
“I prefer it there. Leave it where it lays.”
She ceased the juggling act and let go of the woolen blanket.
Unlike the dead woman, Kate Barnum had never been pretty. Guys would call her interesting, just interesting, eternally interesting. I liked interesting. Interesting usually had more depth than flat out pretty and certainly more than beautiful. Her dull blond hair was a curly mop of anarchy; tight ringlets here, droopy twirls there. Her brows were brown and thick in opposition to thin, pale lips and an incongruously delicate nose. Her skin was blotchy from stress and Scotch and cigarettes. And the weak make-up job couldn’t hide where her cheeks sagged slightly at the flanks of her square chin and under crystal gray eyes. Without those eyes she’d be less interesting, but that was one factor we didn’t have to worry about.
“Now that your sharp eyes have surmised I’m not the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe, can I ask you some questions about this evenings events?”
I thought about denying the dual correctness of her assessment, but chose instead to hold her inquiries at arm’s length.
“Are you always so charmingly egocentric?” I wondered.
“Sorry,” she gave an insincere bow. “It’s just a line I learned at a Carnegie seminar. Helps break the ice at parties. I do so hate making small talk.”
“Me too; small talk, big talk, any kinda talk. I’ve talked myself sore. So let’s skip it.”
“Come on, Mr. Klein, give us both a break,” the blue-jeaned and cowboy-booted Barnum was suddenly more sincere. “It’s late. I’m tired. You’re tired. .”
“You forgot to mention it’s Christmas Day,” I scolded.
She plopped her mini-recorder unceremoniously on the bar and rolled up the ends of her frayed sweater sleeves. “It’s Christmas Day. It’s late. I’m tired. You’re tired. . There! Is that any better?”
“Kate Barnum. Kate Barnum,” I repeated in a loud whisper, ignoring her question. “I know that name. I’ve read it somewhere.”
“In the Whaler,” she tried to deflect my meanderings.
“No. .” I drifted on, running pages of old newsprint from memory past my internal eye. As an insurance investigator, I’d had plenty of dead time for reading the papers. “The New York Times. That’s it!” I slapped the bar in self-satisfaction, landing my hand uncomfortably close to her Sony. “You slummin’?”
“Not slumming, Mr. Klein.”
“You’ve fallen quite a ways from the Times.”
“Farther than you can ever know,” Kate Barnum’s face took on a sadly serene glow like a leper at peace with her fate.
I’d had to talk to the cops. Even Bojangles himself couldn’t’ve tapped his way around that. Reporters were different. Why say anything to anyone anyway, until I hooked up with John Francis in the morning? A prudent man would’ve followed MacClough’s Law: Never speak to the fucking press. They can’t twist what you don’t say, though they try hard enough. But Johnny was an ex-cop and cops rated the press third on their shit list just behind politicians and criminal lawyers and ahead of serial killers and child molesters.
I spoke to her. Maybe just because she had fallen. For me, that could be enough. Interesting and fallen, my kind of woman. But I’d have to explore that weakness of mine some other night. For now I dusted off and trotted out the same old version of the night’s happenings that I’d spoon-fed the law. They’d seemed satisfied with it. I figured it would make Barnum happy, too. That was my mistake.
“Look, Mr. Klein,” the reporter smirked, shaking her head like a skeptical teacher listening to an excuse about a pit bull eating his master’s homework. “Even if I bought the coincidence of Jane Doe just popping in out of nowhere to catch her breath, I couldn’t swallow the rest of it with a five-pound bag of sugar. It doesn’t hang together. Like why did you follow a complete stranger out into the cold and snow while leaving the bar totally unattended? You see what I mean?”
“I was concerned about her,” I tried meekly. “She seemed a little unbalanced. I don’t know.”
“Okay, then, why didn’t you go after her immediately or try and stop her from leaving at all? No, Mr. Klein. I may have tumbled a long distance from the city beat at the Times, but I didn’t have a lobotomy on the way down.”
“The cops liked-”
“The cops!” she threw up her hands. “The cops wanted to get home for the holiday.”
I surveyed the Scupper. It had pretty much emptied out. This wasn’t the crime scene, after all. And they’d pretty much finished with me.
“The cops,” Barnum started up again. “Just because they’re pretty sure you didn’t kill the stiff, doesn’t mean they believed you. Cops work slowly, but don’t mistake that for stupidity. They can afford to come back tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.”
I knew she was right, but I only needed one tomorrow. I was stalling for a ten-minute chat with MacClough.
“You asked for the story,” I put on an angry mask. “You got the story. Life’s weird sometimes. Sometimes things don’t hang together. Like promising careers, for instance.”
I might just as well have stabbed her for the pain on her face. No, I don’t think a knife would’ve hurt quite so much. But she refused to take up the mask of anger. In fact, she didn’t do anything but shrink.
“Can I buy a drink?” she wanted to know, tensely biting down on her bottom lip. The interview was over. “Bourbon?”
“Sure,” I got up off the stool and made my way behind the bar.
The last of the occupying armada “Merry Christmased” their way out the door. One or two of the detectives suggested I not do any interstate visiting any time soon. I explained that I hated holiday travel anyway.
“Wild Turkey or Maker’s Mark?” I refocused on the thirsty reporter.
“Haven’t you got anything cheaper?” she wondered, throwing some balls of crumpled currency onto the bar top.
“Don’t sweat it,” I flicked the crushed bills back to her. “Tonight it’s on the house. You can pay for the speed rack bourbon next trip.”
If I’d been expecting any proud protests, they weren’t forthcoming.
“Maker’s Mark,” was all she had to say.
“On the rocks or-”
“-straight,” Barnum stole the second option from my throat. “Straight. Neat. A double. And now,” she rattled off like some throwaway character of Hemingway’s.
She didn’t bother trying to coax me into joining her. Kate Barnum no longer cared about drinking alone. Three double bourbons’ worth of watching showed me she’d gotten over that hump some time ago. I poured her a fourth before putting the long-necked bottle dressed in fake, drippy-red wax back on the shelf over my shoulder.
“I smell a good story here, Klein,” she tried that bit of triteness on for size.
“That’s your breath you’re smellin’, Ms. Barnum. Now why don’t you go home and write it up like I explained?”
“Because your telling stinks worse than my breath,” she slammed the evacuated tumbler onto the pitted counter and lit up a filterless Chesterfield. A few drinks and the first drag on her cigarette seemed to put some wind back in her sails. “You don’t fool me, Klein. I’m going to get this story. It wants me to get it.”
“There’s no story to get.”
“You’re right,” she agreed too easily. “When a middle-aged woman dressed in Salvation Army mink and made up like an orange day-glo hooker gets her brains rearranged and a canary stuffed in her dead mouth in this town, that’s not a story. That’s legend, my friend.”
With that pronouncement, she swept her collection of crushed dollar bills off the bar and into a hip pocket. She threw on a ski parka that’d probably never seen the slopes nor the insides of a dry cleaners. The beige coat was so worn and soiled you could divine the outlines of where the tape recorder was usually carried. And that’s the pocket she put it in.
“Save your Merry Christmases for someone who’ll listen,” the thoroughly braced reporter preempted, waving her right palm at me like a poor man’s Diana Ross. Kate Barnum was a veteran drinker. The straight, stumble-free line she made out of the bar proved as much. She didn’t have to tell me I’d be seeing her again. I knew I would. Parts of me looked forward to it. Still others smelled trouble in the wake of her perfume. I finally locked the Scupper’s front doors. Some of me wanted to collapse into sleep, but that was for books and movies and my three wishes. I tended to wear insomnia like a second skin. I shut the bar lights, settled down with the stuffed fishes and let the new TV babble once again.
Jacob Marley, wrapped in chains and moaning-sort of like my brother Josh getting his cavities drilled by Great Uncle “Who Needs Novacaine” Ziggy, in Brighton Beach in 1963-was busily laying guilt at the feet of old Scrooge. Ebenezer wasn’t having any, yet. He had three ghosts to go. I dangled the orphaned heart in the TV glare and wondered how many ghosts might be waiting to visit the likes of one John Francis MacClough.
Diary of Wasted Days
My right arm was warmly numb underneath her. The smooth inside of my left forearm could feel the soft ridges of branching blue veins buried just beneath the cloudy white skin of her breasts. Curling my left wrist with eager pain, I captured a bullet-hard nipple between the tips of my thumb and forefinger. I pinched the pink bullet and she shook. Suddenly, something else stiffened, something resting between the pillow of her buttocks and the moist opening of her soul.
She released her nipple from my grip and guided my fingers south along her abdomen, over the lightly downed skin below her waist and into a wet tangle of hair and hunger. My fintertip chased and caught an elusive button hidden under the coarse weave and slippery skin. I dipped my finger fully into her and brought the moisture to my mouth.
God, she was different. My finger smelled of patchouli and she tasted like bourbon and cigarettes on my tongue. I could feel my thighs tighten as a drop of me rolled onto her somewhere. She grabbed my hand and licked it, too.
“You don’t fool me, Klein,” her throaty whisper faded into the black.
I rolled her over to kiss her, to cut my tongue on her teeth. My hands cupped her cheeks and I pressed down on her. I never reached her lips.
Feathers and brittle claws!
We lay together on the train platform. Her eyes still vacantly searching the arc-lighted sky. There was blood, again, on the end of my finger, on my lips and rolling onto the snow from the tip of my penis.
I tried running, but my naked feet were tractionless against the frozen concrete and ice. I slid every second step, peeling my skin away in sheets. There was no pain nor much blood.
At the edge of the station, a dark form pulled me up. It was bound and shackled and wore a diamond heart at the end of a stethoscope.
“Your hands.” It grabbed them. “I want your hands. They want me to get them.”
The shadow man squeezed my hands. I could feel that more clearly, now, and the sweat consuming what was left of my unpeeled skin.
“Hey, Klein!” he shook my shoulders. “Klein!” a rough hand slapped my cheeks. “For chrissakes!”
My shoulders were free. A chair crashed. So did I.
“I thought a fall on that flat Jewish ass might wake you up.” Johnny MacClough stood over me shaking his head in mock disgust. “Must’ve been a helluva dream.”
“That,” I yawned, cracking my stiff neck, “was no dream.”
The cloud-filtered morning light seemed to bend around MacClough on its journey to my crusty eyes. I rubbed them to no good end and began scratching at the ever-increasing gray of my beard. Why was it, I wondered, that gray hair looked so distinguished on everyone else. On me it looked like a diary of wasted days. On me it was a constant reminder of knees that stayed sore too long and breath that just grew shorter. It’s funny what you wonder about.
Johnny MacClough had no beard nor any gray hair in his full blond waves. Though a good ten years my senior, he’d always introduce me to people as his father. As yet, no one was quite blind enough to believe it, but sometimes, just sometimes, strangers hesitated a bit too long before laughing.
“Merry Christmas!” I threw my right hand out for a shake and a pull up.
“Bar looks like shit,” he observed accusingly, but yanked me up just the same.
“You heard?” I rolled my shoulders and stretched.
“I heard. Carney practically jumped me on my way in. I haven’t seen the old bastard that agitated since they cut out his right lung. He was a little sketchy on the details, but your name kinda got mentioned every third word.”
“Yeah, it was quite a party.”
“Do tell,” Johnny sat down at the bar where Kate Barnum had sat. “Do tell.”
I did. I told. Everything, this time. He wore his cop face, absorbing it all like a skeptical sponge. I hated that particular face, that cop face. The face that saw only enemies. The face that says: “Yeah, right! You lying scumbag. Stop wasting my time and tell me the truth. Truth? I wouldn’t believe it anyway coming outta your mouth.” I hated that face because it was reflexive and showed a MacClough I didn’t know, couldn’t know, didn’t want to know. I told myself he couldn’t help it. That attitudes couldn’t be left at the door like service revolvers and badges. But I still hated that face.
“Johnny Blue, huh?” the ex-detective peeled off the cynical make-up sooner than expected, almost too soon. “Good name for a rockabilly star.”
“So you’re not-”
“-Johnny Blue. No. Sorry to disappoint you.”
“And this doesn’t mean anything to you?” I fished the diamond heart out of my pocket.
“Not unless it means we’re goin’ steady,” he gave a cursory glance at the orphaned heart. “Thanks, Dylan,” he never called me that.
“For. .”
“For putting on the stall until we talked. Merry Christmas ya heathen Jew bastard.” He hugged me.
“You’re welcome, but now how do I tell the cops about these new details? I wasn’t shocky or anything. It’s gonna look pretty suspicious.”
“Here,” Johnny snatched the jewlry out of my paw. “I’ll handle it.”
“But-”
“But nothin’. I said I’ll deal with it and I will. I do the cop-speak thing pretty damned well,” he bragged, sounding more like the man I knew.
“So whaddaya think?” I tried turning the page back to the subject of murder.
“About what?” MacClough wanted to know, sniffing at the cold coffee I’d left on the bar the night before.
“About raggy mink ladies with orange make-up. About little yellow birds and bullet holes. About-”
“Where’s my sweater,” John cut me off.
“The cops. I told you. Nitrate tests. Remember?”
“Yeah,” he waved carelessly. “I never believed half the shit those fore
nsic guys came up with. I swear they used to make their results up as they went along.”
“What about the murder?” I refused to let go.
“What about it? Murder is murder. When you strip away all the frills, all you got is a dead human being,” was the ex-cop’s strangely undetective-like conclusion. “The bird? Could be window dressing. Could be it just flew into her mouth. Maybe Frank Perdue is a serial killer. I don’t know. It’s fuckin’ Christmas Day. Can we get off the subject?”
“Sure,” I gave in uneasily. “Let’s clean up.”
“No, not today. I’ll do it tomorrow.” He squeezed the back of my neck with brotherly affection. “Let’s go open some gifts.”
“Okay, MacClough,” I shook his calloused right hand.
He took one long look at the barroom and stood, head bowed, for some seconds. It seemed oddly like a moment of prayer.
London in December
Whenever I could not write, I’d assemble mental lists of authors and poets I could barely approximate and never be. There were very many lists. I would never be F. Scott or J.R.R. or e.e. or T.S. or J.D. or W.H. or D.H. or H.D. I’d never be Ernest or Ezra, Wallace or William, Kurt or Carlos, Richard or Raymond, Ann, Anne, or Ayn. I would never be Leo or Isaac, Hammett or Hesse, T. Wolfe or V. Woolf. I would always be Dylan, but neither Bob nor Thomas.
I was furiously making lists today. I was making lists to camouflage the bald spot on my brain where the words had stopped coming from. I was making lists to distract my eyes from the mounting pile of crumpled white paper surrounding my desk like unmelting snowballs. I was making lists to ease the frustration of blank pages. Blank pages; the only thing that ever made insurance work seem like romance.
When the lists didn’t work, I’d read. I was reading today. I was reading my own stuff; the three poems and two short stories that’d been published since my change of career. Sometimes reading my own printed words would pump me up, slap me, throw cold water in my face, fool me into believing there was hope and promise in the world and within me. Today, I wasn’t fooling so easy. Early on, I tried to juice myself by staring at photostats of the publishers’ payment checks, but today their sparse digits only fueled the frustration.
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