by Brian Hodge
Driving farther west, reluctant to get back on the interstate, he was relieved to see an old-time stand up phone booth. He pulled into a gravel lot which displayed a sign for Aunt Louise's Sea-Monkey-o-Rama. Wells wondered if they were edible, but thought it best to call the police first. Hell, maybe he could sell this to that William Shatner who did the narrative on "Rescue 911."
Glad he wasn't wearing the Blue Eagle jumpsuit, because it had no side pockets for change, Vossner Wells swiveled towards the pay phone. An old woman with no visible teeth — presumably Aunt Louise — came running towards him, pointing at the sea monkey display. He was more curious about her appearance; her breasts were the same size as her chins and all told, she must have had about six of each as she bobbled down the path.
The sea monkeys were all arranged in glass fishbowls like you won at the carnival, placed on wooden slats three high near the road. The glass bowls were colored orange and navy blue and most certainly would attract anyone's attention on a sunny day.
Past the sea monkey stand, Vossner Wells saw the pick-up. Aunt Louise thought nothing of it.
Again, he could only watch, stunned, as the driver of the pick-up popped the clutch and sped forward. Wells ran towards the Eldo, the pick-up smashing through the wooden tires. Glass shattered, little pink things flew up and dotted the grey sky, and Aunt Louise kept shrieking about her poor little sea monkeys. Wells thinking, screw that, I'm dead and I don't know why.
He turned onto the road and realized the truck was no longer behind him. Stopping, he turned back to look at the demolished stand. Aunt Louise was standing by the pick-up and, it looked as if the driver was hunched over the dashboard, furiously writing something. A moment later, he was handing her a check. Wells tried to make out the guy's features, but there was crushed sea monkey pulp obscuring a portion of the windshield. The check, if that is what it was, seemed to satisfy Aunt Louise, as she stepped back spryly to the shack she'd initially come out, completely ignoring the few remaining live creatures on the ground.
Sumbitch if the guy who was trying to kill him done made good with the woman, Wells thought as he continued back to the interstate on-ramp. He wished he were wearing his karate outfit. He'd kick the damn windshield of the pick-up.
Exit 194 - Wolcott was where it ended. The Holiday Star was fifty-eight miles away. The drizzle had picked up again — it had been dry since Indy — and Wells had to stop at the Stuckey's across from the old, boarded-up Cheese House, The Clinton Administration had not been good for Midwestern economy. He knew that there would be no phone in this godforsaken hell-hole, but he had a plan.
Knowing the driver of the pick-up would patiently wait for him outside, Vossner strolled through the souvenir aisle, and past the country & music tape rack, before going to the freezer section. Humming the theme from "Blue Hawaii," he purchased half a dozen cheese logs and several sticks of butter, the latter, to sate his appetite. He licked the sticks like ice cream.
It all happened rather quickly, and maybe Vossner Wells would have made it to the Holiday Star in Merrillville had he not had his hands greased up from the Land O'Lakes butter wrapper.
Looking as determined as he had back when he was pinching his loaf at the Memphis truck stop on the other side of the state, he surprised the driver of the pick-up by moving the Eldorado straight towards him at a steady clip. Holding the wheel with one greasy hand, Vossner Wells tossed one frozen cheese log after another at the cab, shattering the windshield several times.
Certainly he had tried to swerve, but the butter smears had done him in. The Eldo locked grills with the Dodge, both continued into the sole gas tank that Stuckey's still ran, and a ball of flame engulfed the horizon. Vossner Wells' TCB medallion, with the lightning bolt chipped at the bottom, was torn from his chest and landed at the side of the road. A land surveyor named Szostak would find it, months later, when the Stuckey's had been torn down to make room for a Shoney's. Both bodies were burned beyond recognition and were eventually identified through a DMV check of the license plates and by dental records.
Dick Varco and Pressley Pinkham were curious as to Vossner Wells' absence, but soon assumed that the twenty-three Little Debbie Figaroos had been what done him in. Coincidentally, Quentin Tarantino was in attendance, and he was so impressed with Pinkham's disco-Elvis look that he hired him on the spot, to appear opposite Tony Danza in a film very loosely based on the O. J. Simpson debacle.
Shelbyville, Chicago:
February 1995
Choirs
The balding, gaunt man and his wife drove away from their house at eight o'clock that Saturday morning. The woman's hair was still as black and luxurious as the day he had first touched it, in the balcony of the Colony Theater at 59th and Kedzie. There were again rumors that the building, vacant for years now, was going to be demolished and replaced with a donut shop and a mini-mart. Hair as black as the previous night: the man, heedless of the February cold, had set on his back porch, their porch, now that the mortgage had finally been paid off, and contemplated what he might do today.
His wife had not shared the moment with him. Friday night revelry sounds from the bars down Western Avenue; peals of female laughter, the deeper voices of boys slurring hockey statistics. His own sounds of reverie; a sigh, then the sibilance of his breath being sucked through his clenched teeth. He had gone in at midnight, the screen door slamming shut in the wind, the inner door latched tightly with his decision.
Eight hours later, Saturday morning, driving north on Artesian. And his wife's hair so beautifully black that he could almost ignore the small globe of spit perched on her slack lower lip. Glinting silver in the blue of this fine winter's day.
The son and daughter, each in their teens with the daughter being five years younger, were still asleep. The daughter would awaken first, promptly at nine, but she would not be concerned by the emptiness of the two-story house. The silence would tell her that she would find a note in her father's bold script on the refrigerator.
She knew how her parents loved to drive. All the memories they shared, past the theaters and the parks. Her father still enjoyed driving.
The note she expected to see — or so her father assumed as he drove along in silence — would be attached to the Coldspot refrigerator by an ice cream cone magnet, something which should have been taken down years previous. It had been a constant reminder of her mother not to snack when the house was empty in the afternoons. Her mother had never gained that much weight. And now the magnet served as a reminder of summer vacations and simpler times.
The man thought again that he was forty-five years old and what an incredible thing that was. As he waited for the windows to defrost, that he might direct his wife's gaze outward, he looked over tenderly at the woman he had married twenty years before. She was looking back at him, or possibly at some bright thing beyond him. He gently wiped her mouth, then loosened her bright wool scarf as the car's interior warmed up.
He drove with his tongue mashed to this clenched teeth, thinking many things. He worried that when they returned in the next few minutes, the children might hear the garage door opener. Most likely they would think the car would be pulling out.
But it was Saturday. They probably wouldn't hear it at all.
The weekend drives had become a common thing, sometimes they would take several trips before it became dark, since his wife had come home from Holy Cross diagnosed with Alzheimer's.
When they went on their excursions during their first years of marriage, they had been content to simply watch others' lives pass by as they in turn passed by the various neighborhoods and unincorporated areas of their world. Watch a new generation of children playing in McKinley Park, boys and girls who grew up to pair together and walk hand in hand down the same paths.
His wife had always enjoyed going to the park in autumn and stare in wonder at how many different colors there could be for the leaves on the trees. As he stared at the bare branches against the blue sky, he thought of the note he ha
d left beneath the magnet. Perhaps he should have left it on the counter, that the children might not see it first thing.
Lindsay had been born the summer he had bought the 1976 Sunbird, the car had always been a part of her life. Johnny's as well. He could not remember which relative they had given the baby seat to.
The car still ran like a dream. It seemed as if he were dreaming now. He looked over at his wife as he eased the car east on Marquette. Would she notice the sheen of sweat on his bald head? Sweating, though he was chilled to the bone. The interior of the car as warm as Indian summer.
Seeing her fidgeting with her skin chilled him even more.
"Honey," he spoke to his wife. "Almost there." No more cute nicknames. "Honey" or "Dear" had sufficed for months now. Patiently so.
He said it again, wanting to believe that she understood that he was talking to her. The disease had destroyed her quickly. He could cry at night no longer.
On the back porch.
In the darkness of night, like his wife's hair so black. He told her they were going towards McKinley Park, to see the autumn colors.
South down Western, then back towards home. There would be no park. He was cold, but not much longer. No, not the park.
It had been Groundhog Day when he had gone out with his wife for their second date. They had laughed over a silly thing like newspaper reporters writing about a little furry animal sticking its head out of the ground at Lincoln Park Zoo. The groundhog hadn't seen its shadow that year. At times he forgot if that meant that winter was ending or if it were to be extended.
He wondered if it were like that for his wife at the beginning, if she had just started forgetting simple things. The first time he had noticed, she was drinking cough syrup with a tablespoon, the maroon liquid dripping thickly down the sides of her mouth to her chin. He hadn't worried about it until it occurred again, and he realized that she was trying too hard to rationalize her mistakes.
Things ran in circles; his thoughts, the car driving in a three-block square area. His wife was dribbling again. Telling her that they were in the park, he mentioned the maples and the sycamore, the reds and the golds, as he pulled the car back into their garage.
He was shivering openly now. His wife had fallen asleep. He thought of one of Shakespeare’s sonnets, one his wife had read to him because it meant something to her. He couldn't recall the exact wording. The sonnet was about love and aging and birds in the trees.
"Bare, ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang."
Was that it? He wanted to laugh when he thought about waking his wife to ask her if he were correct.
When had he become such a coward? Would the newspapers say how this would affect his son and daughter? He talked aloud about the trees, the birds. He never mentioned the cold. The groundhog had not seen his shadow again this year. What did that mean? He wasn't certain anymore.
He reached over and touched his wife's beautiful, black hair, stroking it as though it were the first time. Touched the garage door opener with his other hand, several times, finally letting it close.
He leaned closer to his wife. Watched the trees through the windshield long after the door hummed shut. Watched until his eyes had adapted to the darkness so well that he could make out the shadows of each tool on the workbench, each yard game piled against the wall nearest him, in the faint light from beyond the curtained window.
Bare ruined choirs, he said one last time. His wife no longer snored in her sleep. He missed that sound. He could not hear the heater.
It was warming them so well, taking away the cold, the way their lives had become. He touched her hair, her crooked hands, the windshield fogging slightly. Her face becoming blue as her scarf and the sky outside.
He held her close and soon they were both dead.
Chicago,
24 September 1993
Another Face of Celandine
A dull, beet-colored light in the alley behind Mohawk Street washed over the two cops' faces like blood clots bathing the brain. An April wind came off the lake, but all they smelled was oil and garbage. Stelfreeze and Rexer had been standing there five minutes, had watched one of their own go through the back door of a house of prostitution. They had gone because they were making sure that Bill Valent wasn't accepting payoffs.
It was much worse than that.
They moved forward towards the second floor landing. Both were out of uniform. The harsh glow from behind slatted blinds was brighter than the softer light from a third story window A blue light wavered, and Rexer realized it was most likely a television.
With the muted sounds of evening around them, Stelfreeze said to the darkness, "Well, here we are." The way he announced it, Rexer thought of a car pulled over into a Lover's Lane, and that the two were on a first date, the lights of the city laid out below them. He had this inane vision because this is how it is with cops partnered for fifteen years.
Stelfreeze stared at the darkness that loomed above them, his lips bloodless, cleft chin thrust out in acceptance of about what they were going to do. He knew stories about this place, tales he had not shared with Rexer. Only because he had never expected to be looking for, or after, one of their own here.
His partner was absently running his long fingers through his Grouchoesque mustache as he also looked at the sky. Only Stelfreeze was not staring as the April darkness bruised black and purple, the light from the nearest stars barely making it through the pollution. The abyss Stelfreeze was aware of was a call girl with a unique angle, a whore who used the name Lullaby & Goodnight. The reasoning behind the usage of dual names being the darkest sky of all.
A woman with a young girl's mind, who never spoke yet mewled at all the proper moments. Her real name was Celandine Tomei, and her Mama charged upwards of fifteen yards for the ultimate in one night stands. The highest salaried men allegedly descended on this dilapidated two-flat on North Mohawk, the turks of the town come to kill or mutilate the prostitute as she orgasmed in her abnormal and childlike way.
Then return the following month to repeat the act. Mama Tomei took Visa, Mastercard, Amex, and Diner's Club for the act itself. Other than living expenses, the funds received went towards plastic surgery and bone reconstruction. There was certainly no advertising costs, hence Rexer's ignorance of what the two cops would encounter here.
Stelfreeze knew too many people in the television industry, thanks to his sister marrying a sportscaster for the station who considered its biggest competitor to be MTV, not CNN. And sometimes he heard the stories that they kept off the air and held close to their disgusting hearts.
Stories about the ultimate one-night stand.
He thought long and hard on that. Realizing that suicide came in a weak second to what was allegedly experienced here. The porch was enclosed on two sides; Stelfreeze saw a swing near the north end of the landing, a strip of curled flypaper matted to the wire mesh behind it. Magazines were strewn across the grey with whitened sawdust in the cracks. He wondered if they were skin magazines, or, from what he had heard of the expected clientele, recent copies of U.S. News & World Report.
And if their cop friend was really here accepting payoffs, Stelfreeze envisioned Valent walking up these steps with his pockets stuffed with racing forms. In for a penny, and all.
Rexer's thoughts were more metaphorical as they walked up to the wooden frame door. Yellowed venetian blinds were askew behind the dirty glass, yet he thought they should be encountering some kind of a steel door as might be found at the Haddon Cobras crackhouse on Leavitt.
But there was no eyeslit drawn back, no click of revolver behind the walls, as the door opened ever so slowly below the darkness above. The woman who stood in the doorway was so frail that she made any skell under a heat vent on Lower Wacker Drive look like a television wrestler. She was framed in the kitchen light, not caring that her sagging breasts were outlined beneath her flowered beige nightdress.
Both cops were reminded uncomfortably of their respective mothers.
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br /> The light on the ceiling was one of those overhead jobs that consisted of two concentric rings of harsh, milky-white light. The Northside's version of the Tesla coil, Stelfreeze always thought. Which was often, as there were three such lights in his flat on Aberdeen. The woman, Mama Tomei, was five feet two, add another inch if the wind caught her off balance. Her eyebrows were penciled in and angled upwards the way a lunatic playing "she loves me, she love me not" with the limbs of a dead rodent might arch his own quivering brows.
"You must be Mr. Stelfreeze," a withered hand reached out towards the larger cop. "Mr. Lehming told me you would be coming by. I do so love watching the way he talks about our Cubs..." She mentioned the network affiliate Stelfreeze's brother-in-law worked for.
She then extended her hand to Rexer, continuing her talk of baseball. "That Mark Grace is just the cutest thing!" Rexer smiled, wondering why there wasn't more expensive furniture in their immediate surroundings. Perhaps it was upstairs, and the money they were making here furnished a lakefront home in Winnetka.
They still clutched hands, their calluses touching. "I am Mama Tomei. Please do call me Mama."
"The pleasure is mine," Rexer said. He smelled meat on her breath. Stelfreeze also nodded back in greeting.
Mama Tomei swung her arms in a bid for them to enter Castle Frankenstein, and they walked across cracked linoleum the shade of pea soup that had been puked up into a shadowed gutter. A black and white Emerson TV, antennae angled towards two o'clock, sat on a beige counter. Barney Miller was telling Wojo and Deitrich to handle a burglary over on Bleecker.
"Please," the woman said, sliding in to a chair. "You sit now. Celly, she is with someone now."
Bill Valent, both cops thought. Hell, they could smell the Eternity cologne he always splashed on every Friday night.