Jenny and the Jaws of Life

by Jincy Willett

  “Where’s the regular guy?” I asked him. “Where’s Hal Glossop?” Glossop had always been the Lamour man; this guy was a nut. He said, “What?” I said, “Where’s Glossop?” He said, “I’m sorry, there’s a fire engine.” “Skip it,” I said, but he didn’t hear that either, and I had to yell “Glossop” into the phone at least four times, which is annoying enough under normal circumstances and with a normal name. Cosmo was staring at me, dazed and fearful; every time I yelled this nonsense word he seemed to inch back closer to the brink. In the end I told Pillbeam I would come right over, collect the booze, and give him a ride to the nearest Rent-a-Car. He was only a mile away, and obviously incapable of looking after himself. Besides, it was something to do. It’s always good to keep moving.

  Cosmo was frantic. At first I thought he just didn’t want to be alone, but it wasn’t that simple, or that sane. He was terrified that he was going to get “my” phone call. “I couldn’t stand being the one to tell you,” he said. “Jesus,” I said, “do you have to look at it that way? What if it’s good news?” He said, “Don’t say that.”

  “Cosmo, I’ll only be fifteen minutes. Take the phone off the hook.” He looked at me like I was crazy.

  Finally he decided, believe it or not, that if he got “my” phone call and the news was bad, he would lower the shade on the front door. I left him standing behind the center checkout, looking stoically away from the telephone, with one hand square on top of it. Whether he was willing it to ring, or not to ring, who knows.

  You couldn’t miss Pillbeam. He was sitting by the curb on a stack of Lamour cases, against which leaned a life-size cardboard woman who looked like Lena Horne and dressed like Carmen Miranda, except that the fruit on her head was disturbingly alien. She cradled a bottle of orange Lamour and said “Let’s Mango, señor.” We loaded the cases in the rear hatch and stuck the display in the backseat. “Did they really expect us to set this up in the store?” I asked, and Pillbeam said, “Apparently so.” He was maybe late fifties, his suit was shiny and baggy, and you just knew he lived in some cheap hotel, there was an ex-wife dogging him for alimony, he drank a lot, and not Mango Nectar. When guys like this are intelligent, they’re even more depressing. As I drove I tried not to look at him. “Sauve qui peut,” as Hannah would say.

  But I had to ask him if he was all right. His skin was gray and his eyes bright, and he had that air of fever-pitch gaiety you’d associate with someone who’s about to yell “Whoopee!” and dive out the window. “Pillbeam,” I said again, “are you all right?” He still didn’t answer, and I thought, swell, I’m going to have to cart this sad sack to the emergency room. I pictured poor old Cosmo manning the phone.

  Pillbeam spoke. “Do you remember Victor Mature?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sure. I remember Victor Mature.”

  “I used to live next door to him,” he said. “Good old Vic Mature.”

  This forced me to look at him, and I growled, “Snap out of it, Pillbeam. I don’t have time for you.”

  He regarded me with hurt, rational surprise. “I’m all right,” he said. “This is my normal—” and then a pizza delivery van, running a light, smashed into Pillbeam’s side of the car, turning us into the path of a gorgeous ’56 Chevy, turquoise and cream, which bore down on my side of the Toyota like the Avenger of Detroit and punched us out with almost no damage to itself. When we came to rest my car had what felt like a wasp waist, and Pillbeam and I were pinched together inside it.

  For a while I kept drifting in and out, and in dreams I grappled with Cosmo, trying to keep him from lowering the blind. I came awake to bruises and cracked ribs but otherwise okay, except that I was pinned between Pillbeam and the door and couldn’t move anything but my head. Pillbeam looked bad. He was unconscious, soap-white and bleeding heavily from deep scalp cuts. The Mango girl, her sharp-edged hat crumpled by Pillbeam’s head, splattered with Pillbeam’s blood, grinned at him from the backseat. The upholstery, front and back, reeked of fermented tropical fruit.

  I could see nothing distinct through the translucent, rock-candy fabric of the windshield, the whole surface of which pulsed a deep ice blue from the revolving light of a police car. State troopers knocked on the side windows, and pressed their sunburned faces to the glass. I couldn’t roll mine down and I couldn’t reach Pillbeam’s. The guy on my side shouted at me to try opening my door, but I didn’t feel like it, and Pillbeam’s guy, wrestling with the door handle and rocking the car, yelled, “This one’s frozen, too.” Soon it seemed like at least thirty troopers walked around and around the car, running their hands all over it. I felt like we were on display in some showroom of classic wrecks.

  Finally my guy came back to the window and yelled, “Buddy? How are ya, Buddy?” I said I was just fine. “How’s your friend?” I said he was just fine. “Listen, Buddy,” he said, “we gotta get you out of there.” Right. “We’re waiting for the fire department now. We’re gonna have to use the Jaws of Life. Get me?” Check.

  He shouted at me not to panic, and after some time he came back and told me again not to panic, this time with a new urgency in his voice. By now I could smell, above the nauseating jungle rot, the sharp, relatively pleasant tang of gasoline. “Nothing to worry about, Buddy” came through the glass as a muffled scream. He couldn’t know, and I didn’t have the energy to tell him, that worrying about your own life can be, under certain circumstances, mildly refreshing. I didn’t want to die, and yet it felt so good just then, so clean and simple, to be hurt and immobilized.

  Pillbeam moaned and stirred. He turned his head and looked at me “How are ya, Buddy?” I asked him. He blinked once for “yes.” He cleared his throat. “Smell?” he inquired. I told him it was his own stinking rotgut but he knew better. “Let’s leave,” he said. I told him we would in a sec. He started to sink back into unconsciousness, from which, for all I knew, he might never return. “Pillbeam!” I said. “Tell me about Victor Mature!” He said that Victor Mature was a Hollywood actor in the 1950s, and then he asked if we were doomed.

  “All I know,” I said, “is that they’re bringing the Jaws of Life.”

  He seemed to perk up at this. His expression grew alert, intelligent. Then it kept on going, and turned loony. “What did you say?” he demanded, and I said, “We need the Jaws of Life.” He began to laugh, dangerously, with fresh blood framing his eyes like sideburns and who knew what injuries to his guts.

  “You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?” I asked, and he said, “Yes, indeedy!” “It’s a hydraulic rescue tool,” I said, through sirens and flashing red lights. I raised my voice. “It’s got cutting pincers and spreading jaws.”

  “Oh, yes,” gasped Pillbeam.

  And outside somebody said, “I don’t know about you, but if this blows, screw them, I’m outta here,” and somebody said, “Shut up, they’re conscious.”

  “Hold on, Pillbeam,” I said, as the car began to yawn and creak like the hinge on a big steel oyster, and Pillbeam just kept on laughing and bleeding.

  So that’s about it. If you want the final score, it was three to one our side: that is, in favor of the human race. I was good as new in four weeks. Pillbeam was as good as ever in just under six months. Barbara was benign and fine. Hannah got it.

  I’ve never been alone with her to talk, about it or anything else. Barbara spent a lot of time with her after the big operation, and visited her every month during her chemotherapy, because Cosmo couldn’t stand it. Barbara never said much, except that Hannah was strong. Whenever I see Hannah, when the four of us get together, she still laughs her crotch-grabbing laugh and sometimes gives me a secret sentimental squeeze. Cosmo has brown circles under his eyes and has lost at least thirty pounds.

  Barbara was so happy with her luck, and I was so banged up, that she didn’t kick me out or subject me to a long frost. Instead, every now and then, when I’m not expecting it, something sets her off. Just last week when we were having a normal Sunday breakfast, reading the pape
r and so on, I made some remark about Pia Zadora and Barbara leaned over and whacked me in the mouth. Then she was okay again. It’s unnerving, but I’d rather have it this way than talk about it a lot. I don’t believe in talking things out.

  Although about six months ago I really wanted to tell this to somebody—the whole mess, Coriander and Hannah, the lumps, and what they did to her beautiful breast, and the pizza van, and my good friend and partner defeated by a plain black telephone. The only person I could tell was Pillbeam.

  He was still in the hospital and mildly sedated, but he seemed willing to listen. As I talked, certain events, like my stupid confession to Barbara, struck me as funny for the first time, and when I finished I was laughing at everything, the crash, the cancer, everything. Pillbeam smiled politely. “Sorry,” I said, figuring maybe he was in pain. “But the point is, I can see it now, the funny side. It’s a big joke, right?”

  And Pillbeam, my laughing bleeder, said, “I don’t get it,” and turned his face toward the wall.

  “Come on,” I said, to the back of his bandaged skull, “you must have been laughing at something.”

  He said, “I was just being agreeable. I’m an agreeable fellow.” Then sighing he asked me to please go away.

  So here is where I am so far, and this is all I know: the world is a big sardine can, and some of us are too agreeable for words. Most of us, really.

  Read on for an excerpt from

  THE WRITING CLASS

  Available now in hardcover

  from

  Thomas Dunne Books

  Copyright © 2008 by Jincy Willet.

  The Fat Broad

  Lumbers into class five minutes late, dragging, along with her yard-wide butt, a beat-up vinyl briefcase stuffed with old notebooks. A contender once, it’s obvious, she’s got great hair, long and wavy and thick and white gold, but she’s pushing sixty, pushing two hundred, and she wears polyester fat pants and a Big & Tall man’s white long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves ragged and rolled up. Here is a woman who does not give a rat’s ass.

  She sits down behind a rickety desk in front of the whiteboard, upends the briefcase, and spreads out the notebooks and papers in a neat line, like a magician’s row of cards. She’s the teacher. But I knew this. How? Because she’s the only person in the room who isn’t nervous.

  Because she’s the dominant male.

  She looks up and counts us with her eyes. Seven. She heaves herself up on her feet and addresses the whiteboard with a green marker:

  Fiction Writing Workshop

  Amy Gallup

  And she follows it up with the numbers of her home phone and cell phone, which if I turned this into a novel or esp a screenplay I’d have to represent as 555-something, which is foolish, which is stupid, but there you are, this is the world we live in, soft and womanish and lowest common D.

  I, of course, am not nervous. Yes, I am. Why? I’ve done this before. I’m a workshop vet, Purple Heart and Silver Cross. I’ve shown my stories to pretentious morons from sea to shining sea. I’ve been encouraged by twinkly grandmas, torn apart by gynecologists, talked down to by insurance salesmen.

  Write what you know

  The interesting thing about women, they get past a certain age and they might as well be men. The Dominant Male. Title? Idea for story?

  TORN APART

  BY TWINKLY GRANDMAS

  PATRONIZED

  BY GYNECOLOGISTS

  Six more trickle in. The fat broad looks up with studied disinterest. Yes, studied disinterest. It’s not a cliché because these workshop instructors don’t get paid if they don’t fill their quotas. The quota here is ten; any fewer than that and it’s no go, we get our $$ back, the fat broad goes hungry, which would do her a world of good, but never mind. So behind her pleasant, scary face the gears are whirring and grinding. I’ve got to keep ten of these people. Not much breathing space. It’s time to go into my dance.

  And will she dance with me? Will she walk across that floor, past the losers and wannabes, the loudmouths, the grandmas, the housewives with a million stories in them, the math teachers whose characters for God’s sake wake them up in the middle of the night—will she pass them all and pick me? And will it be a fun dance? Will she tell me I’m talented and brilliant and that it’s just a matter of time and perseverance, and will she know what the hell she’s talking about and will she have any idea how much fucking time and perseverance I’ve put into it already and will she look right at me and lie and will she for Christ’s sake help me out or

  2 more, more noise in hallway, here comes another, that makes 16, she must be breathing easier, the bitch.

  Or will she condescend me to fucking death like that pompous twit at Irvine and that pompous twat at Berkeley or look right through me like Professor Twitmore Fucking Twatface in Chi with his Recommended Reading list and his fucking Strunk & White

  WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW

  WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW

  WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW

  WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW

  WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW

  WRITE WHAT YOU

  The Fat Broad speaks.

  First Class

  The List

  This is a fiction workshop. We will meet once a week for nine weeks, counting tonight, at the end of which time each of you will have written at least one piece of fiction and submitted it to the group for critique.” Amy paused a beat, as she always did. “So anybody who thought this was a balloon winemaking class better throw dignity to the winds and beat feet.”

  Somebody tittered, but the rest was silence, except for the drone of that cheap standing fan in the back of the room. It was way past time to tweak the speech; balloon winemaking used to get the big laughs. Amy had a thought. “You do know what balloon winemaking is.”

  A generically lovely young woman raised her hand. “Isn’t that where they like sail over the vineyards and sort of check out the vines?”

  Amy sighed. “Balloon winemaking was a sixties thing. You mixed wine in a bottle, stuck a balloon over the neck, and watched it ferment.”

  “Yeah,” said a guy in the back row, “and after a couple of weeks you got to watch it explode all over your garage.”

  Big laughs. Blessings on thee, little man. He didn’t look quite old enough to remember the sixties, though. Only Amy in all the world was that old. Older even than this stocky, balding little guy with a great wide mouth like a frog. Maybe she could get a routine going with him, a little break-the-ice patter. Maybe he’d help her work the room.

  She made a little show of studying her pre-registration list, which she would turn, before the night’s end, into her own mnemonic cheat sheet. Froggie, she would pencil in next to his name. Amy had a poor memory for faces, let alone names, and needed all the help she could give herself. “And you are…?” She maintained eye contact and let her mouth hang open expectantly.

  Froggie wiggled bushy eyebrows and smiled a secret smile.

  Oh crap. “You want me to guess?”

  “Nah. You’d never do it. I’m not on your list.”

  That’s what you think. Amy shifted in her squeaky chair, raised her voice. “Which brings me to the list. I have here, in my hand”—she waved the pre-registration list—“a list of known…” If they didn’t remember the sixties, for sure they wouldn’t know the fifties. Although, now that she was beginning to look at them individually, clearly there were a few old enough; one woman was more than old enough. “And first among the boring tasks before us tonight is checking your names against this list. Since there are ten names here and sixteen people in the room, my lightning powers of deduction tell me that at least six of you are window shopping.” Hands started to go up. “Shoppers who decide to stay with us will register between now and next Monday.”

  “What if we’re undecided?” Froggie again.

  “We offer this course every quarter. Winter will come around before you know it.” She gave him her frostiest smile, which was unwise. She needed the money; she couldn’t a
fford to alienate potential students (customers, the university extension people called them); and Froggie wasn’t really out of line. But she hated first nights, hated not knowing if she’d have enough people to run the class (she’d never failed, in fifteen consecutive quarters, but there was always a first time), hated most of all having to work a cold room. In a few weeks’ time she’d feel comfortable with these people, and most of them would like her. Right now she wanted them all to buzz off.

  Two hands shot up close together. Amy smiled vaguely in that direction and rattled her damn list. “When I read your name, please tell me if I’ve pronounced it correctly. Between me and the registrar you’ve got about a fifty-fifty chance.” Dead silence.

  Amy focused on the first name, which was, of course, surreal. “Tiny Arena?” Amy had long ago learned, from a student named Mary Louise Poop, to keep incredulousness out of her voice and face when reading the class roll.

  Sure enough a hand went up, connected to a pale, morbidly obese man in his sixties. Even seated he was clearly way over six feet tall. “Tiny Arena?” Amy asked again, gently, and the man gravely nodded. She relaxed. “You know, I’ve come across your nickname in fiction lots of times, but in all my years of teaching, you’re my first real-life Tiny.”

  “Actually,” the man said, and his voice trailed off into a mumble.

  He had eyes like Amy’s basset hound, red-rimmed, lugubrious. Tiny = Alphonse, she wrote.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Tony,” the man said. “Actually, my name is Tony.”

  “But they call you Tiny?”

  “No.”

  “I’m awfully sorry.” Then why in hell did you nod your head yes, you big dope? Somebody giggled. Not Tony Arena. Amy broke a sweat and kept going, even when she saw the next name. Straight-faced, she looked out over the crowd and said, “Harold Blassbag.” Jesus.