“Let’s see here,” Roland looked down at the sheet 25 Dates had provided with conversation starters. “My name’s Roland,” he said. “I’m a business analyst, or rather I was a business analyst. I’m currently unemployed.” He glanced at the sheet again. “My favorite movie is Heat starring Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro. My least favorite movie is Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. It’s not that bad a movie I suppose, it’s just that people talk about it like it’s the next Citizen Kane and yet every time it comes on TV, I’m bored out of my mind.”
The woman hadn’t said anything yet, so Roland kept answering questions off the sheet.
“I suppose I like long walks on the beach. Hmmm. What kind of music do I like? Mötley Crüe and Guns N’ Roses. You know, the really cool stuff that was popular before those grunge bastards ruined everything.”
The redhead stared at him in disbelief.
“Don’t you recognize me?” she said.
Roland looked her up and down. He shook his head. “Nope.”
“I’m Tamara. You know, Kara’s friend? You’ve met me at least five times. Two months ago you came over to my place for dinner.”
“Really? What did we have for dinner?”
Tamara placed her hands on her temples and rubbed them in frustration.
“I made chicken with udon noodles.”
Roland’s eyes widened. “Oh yeah. Don’t you have a boyfriend or something?”
“We broke up,” she said.
“How come?”
“Well, not that it’s any of your business, but I found out he got a lap dance at some strip club.”
“How much did it cost?”
Tamara’s eyes turned into flaming red spheres.
“I don’t know. Fifty dollars.”
“I can see why you were upset,” Roland said. “There’s definitely more touching involved in a fifty-dollar lap dance than in one that costs twenty bucks.”
“Well, thank you for sharing,” she said.
Roland glanced up at the clock.
“What are you doing here?” she said. “Where’s Kara?”
The bell rang and Roland stood up without answering. He waved goodbye to the scowling redhead and moved on to the next table.
Nine minutes, three dates and one encounter with Evil Jessie later, Roland was once again a complete mess. On top of everything this tragic day had thrown at him, Roland now feared that he might have gotten a venereal disease the last time he played water polo. He wondered why he ever came to this event when it would have been so much easier to curl up in the fetal position in bed and whimper for hours, or better yet sit in a running car with the garage doors shut and let the engine fumes gently purr him to sleep.
When the bell rang, the men stood up to move to the next three-minute date. Roland found Henrik waddling between tables.
“Do you want to get out of here?” he said.
“Where would we go?”
Roland wiped his nose on his sleeve.
“To the happiest place on earth.”
Henrik was immediately intrigued. He couldn’t help but wonder — what was this happiest place on earth and why had it taken him forty-two years to be invited to it?
Henrik had been through nearly twenty three-minute dates, some memorable, others completely forgettable, still others harrowing to where he feared they might leak into his dreams. He didn’t know if he could go through with the rest of them. This orgy had turned out not to be an orgy after all, but a case-by-case assessment of his alpha-male skill set, and Henrik feared he’d failed miserably. Ever since he was a little boy, Henrik had heard stories of how amazing love was and how it made you feel like a special person who really mattered to someone. He decided he wasn’t ready for love yet and even if he was, he would never find it here among these evil rollerblade bigots and sexual deviants.
Henrik followed Roland out the doors.
They were headed to the happiest place on earth.
twenty-two
Roland and Henrik hopped in a taxicab and traveled to the seediest area in town. From inside the taxi, Henrik could see junkies shooting up and starving people roaming the streets. This looked entirely different from the utopian society Henrik had imagined. They exited the cab directly across from an old abandoned police station and together entered a bar called the Number 5 Orange. The inside of the club was filled with purple lights and smoke. Henrik noticed immediately that this club was almost entirely populated by men sitting around drinking beer. The only exceptions were the ten or so scantily clad women slinking around in lingerie, asking men if they wanted to dance. Almost every time the women asked, the men turned them down. Henrik couldn’t imagine why these men were turning down women for dances.
He and Roland took their seats next to a giant unoccupied stage with a pole in the middle. A woman with enormous fake breasts and long red fingernails leaned into Roland’s ear and asked him if he wanted a dance. Roland looked her up and down and then shook his head. He turned to Henrik and said, “I’m going to wait until a better one comes along.”
Henrik suddenly realized why this was the happiest place on earth. Inside this club, the laws of the universe were entirely reversed. In here, the men didn’t seek out the women. The women sought out the men. Henrik thought to himself, What great luck I have that on the night I decide to get a girlfriend, I’ve come to a place where women have to proposition me and not the other way around.
A woman in a cheetah costume approached the stage and “Pour Some Sugar on Me” by Def Leppard blared over the club stereo. She danced around and took off her clothes while everyone cheered. Henrik was admiring the awesome ’80s rock when he looked around for the smiling faces on all the men. There were none. When the men weren’t cheering, their faces were deadly serious and even a little glum. Henrik didn’t understand. If the Number 5 Orange was the happiest place on earth, why wasn’t anybody smiling?
The woman in the cheetah costume finished taking off all of her clothes to “You’re Still the One” by Shania Twain and then left the stage. Everyone applauded and bought more drinks. Roland started to cry a little. Henrik looked around at all the glum faces and wondered if the other men were about to cry as well. He started to curse himself for coming here. Entering this bizarro world wasn’t going to make him unique. And this most definitely was not the happiest place on earth. It was a place of misery and sin and while Henrik regarded these qualities to be distinct (and even admirable) attributes within a single individual, he was not in favor of an entire society based upon them. Moreover, the misery and sin seemed to spread through this crowd like a virus, blurring individuality and deadening these men’s souls. Henrik stood to leave when from the corner of his eye, the woman who kissed him at the hospital took the stage in a skimpy schoolgirl outfit.
The past twelve hours had been exceedingly difficult on Bonnie. Everywhere she went — the coffee shop, her friend’s place, the back door of this house of ill-repute — she expected Clyde to jump out from behind a corner and strangle her with his bare hands. Now though, she had to do her job and it was likely to turn her into a living target. Bonnie climbed on stage and waved to the patrons. She surveyed the crowd to make sure her husband was nowhere to be seen and then proceeded to shake her groove thing to Bon Jovi’s “Bad Medicine” while keeping one eye glued to the door. In the purse she’d brought to the stage was her small pistol in case Clyde came in. As the song ended and she removed her bra, the club’s front door opened. Bonnie leaned toward her purse to grab her gun only to see three old men walk in through the entrance. One was wearing a cape.
Bonnie breathed a sigh of relief and continued dancing to Tears For Fears.
From their table in the second row, Roland wiped his eyes and looked up to see the dancer. To his utter amazement, it was the woman he’d bumped into at the lottery kiosk — the very one who’d taken his winning ticket! Roland grabbed Henrik by the shoulders and shook him.
“Do you realize who that is?” he said.
; Yes, Henrik thought, the memory of Bonnie’s marshmallow-flavored tongue still fresh in his mind.
In the distance, Billy Bones sidled up to the bar and ordered a Scotch on the rocks. He handed the bartender a crisp one-hundred-dollar bill and told him to keep the change. Billy surveyed the scene. Nearly a dozen women in various states of undress were sashaying through the crowd. Billy’s eyes spread wide like the tide as he gazed from G-string to fishnet bra. He downed his Scotch in one gulp and rubbed the pug dog cheeks on either side of his face.
From across the room a Spanish beauty dressed as Supergirl headed in his direction. A wide transparent S was spread across her chest and her daring short red skirt carried high with a hint of blue panties underneath. Poor Billy Bones, having just that afternoon entered a stage of dementia in which he couldn’t remember his own name, didn’t recognize her at first.
“Bones!” she yelled over the music. “It’s good to see you again.”
He gave her a confused look.
“It’s me, Rosalina Estranova.”
Billy Bones looked at her Supergirl costume and scratched his head like a frumpy monkey.
“Your true love!” she said.
Suddenly the memories came rushing back — the Second World War, that bunker he hid in for three days while the Germans stormed overhead, Rosalina’s warm touch, her hypnotic brown eyes, that lost weekend they spent naked with a bottle of bourbon and a stash of opium.
“Rosalina!” He wrapped his arms around her.
“Would you like to go upstairs for a private dance?” she said.
Billy Bones glanced over at Conrad and Alfred. He wasn’t quite sure who those two men were anymore.
“It would be my pleasure,” he said.
Rosalina Estranova, the granddaughter of his true love, took Billy Bones by the hand and led him upstairs where a delighted, delirious Billy spent his remaining portion of the forty thousand dollars on a single lap dance.
At the other end of the bar, Alfred had Henrik in his sights. Conrad stood beside him calmly puffing on a cigarette while Alfred prepared his crossbow for a fatal strike. He was just waiting for Conrad to give the order.
Roland’s tears suddenly disappeared. He stood up to ask the woman on the stage what she’d done with his lottery ticket and in doing so, blocked Alfred’s clean shot at Henrik. Roland banged his fist on the stage but Bonnie wouldn’t look at him. She was too busy staring at the front door, waiting for Clyde to barge in and kill her.
Across the room, Conrad leaned in to Alfred’s ear and said, “Take him out.”
Concealing the crossbow with his jacket, Alfred moved covertly toward the bar in search of a clean shot at Henrik. He had him in his sights once again.
“Where’s my ticket?” Roland screamed at the dancer.
Bonnie finally looked his way. She recognized Roland from the lottery kiosk at the marketplace. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“Listen, you slut . . .”
Henrik stood up and grabbed Roland by the arm. After his kiss with Bonnie, Henrik’s mouth had tasted like cherries and butterscotch for hours. That kiss was the only special thing that had ever happened to him. The rest of this world was full of cottaging perverts, orgy parties and depressed drones watching women take off their clothes. That woman up there — whose name Henrik didn’t even know — was the only one who had ever made him feel special. She’d given him a single pure moment of inimitable distinction and he wasn’t about to let this depressed maniac talk to her like that.
Roland struggled to push Henrik away and together the two of them knocked over a pitcher of beer.
From their position at the doorway, a couple of overzealous bouncers stormed over. They had wide Barry Bonds–like heads and biceps as big as Hulk Hogan’s. Together they grabbed Henrik and Roland, picked them up like trash bags and carried them in headlocks towards the front door. As they were thrown out into the street, Henrik stumbled onto the sidewalk just in time to see that same outraged Dunkin’ Donuts employee from the hospital enter the Number 5 Orange. He had an arrow stuck in his chest and a gun in his hand. Henrik looked over at Roland, who was incensed with him for interrupting his conversation with the dancer.
From inside, they heard a woman’s scream and then the emptying of a gun barrel.
The bar patrons poured out into the street in panicked flight. At least sixty men took off in random directions to seek cover. Roland figured out immediately what had happened and started to cry, fearing he would never see his prized ticket again.
Henrik heard two strange sounds, like swords cutting through air. He ran to the doorway to see the Dunkin’ Donuts employee stumble out of the bar. Clyde had two more arrows sticking out of him, one in his left shoulder, the other in his right thigh.
“What’s your name?” Clyde coughed up a little blood.
“Henrik Nordmark.”
“You probably thought you were going to be her new boyfriend,” Clyde said. He checked the barrel of his gun only to find it empty. “You’re next,” he pointed the empty gun at Henrik. Clyde staggered across the street and climbed inside a red Honda Civic with a scratched car bra. He squealed his tires and made a successful getaway.
Henrik looked inside the deserted bar. The only movement was the flash of a crimson-lined cape escaping out the back door. In the center of the stage with her schoolgirl’s costume partially discarded, Bonnie lay still and quiet, blood flowing freely from her back. Henrik had never seen such a sight. There was no question. Bonnie was dead.
twenty-three
In the middle of the night, Bonnie’s dead body was brought to the municipal morgue where a young mortician’s assistant stripped off the remnants of her schoolgirl costume. The mortician’s assistant dutifully removed Bonnie’s short plaid skirt and her clunky stripper boots. As she went to remove Bonnie’s fishnet stockings, the assistant noticed a small piece of paper taped to the bottom of the dead woman’s foot. Gently, she peeled off the paper and discovered it was a lottery ticket. The mortician’s assistant glanced around the empty morgue. She was alone. Without giving it much thought, she tucked the lottery ticket in her pocket and continued her work with the body. She jabbed a tube into Bonnie’s stomach with a little more delight than usual.
Two hours later, after her shift ended, the mortician’s assistant was driving her tiny blue 1967 VW Beetle down the highway when she spotted a Chevron gas station. Chevron was the best gas station in the whole city, she’d decided, because several times a week they brought in fresh cookies from a bakery. She’d had such a stressful day that only a Smarties cookie would suffice. The mortician’s assistant pulled over and entered the gas station. To her dismay, the pastry case was utterly devoid of Smarties cookies. She looked at the last few stale biscuits and felt herself about to cry. Begrudgingly, she selected the chocolate chip cookie with the highest chip-to-cookie ratio and approached the counter to pay for it. The mortician’s assistant was halfway out the door when she remembered the ticket in her pocket. She handed it to the cashier and took a big bite of her cookie.
The lottery machine played a MIDI-version of the song “We’re in the Money.”
“You won,” the stunned cashier said.
The mortician’s assistant shoved half the cookie in her mouth.
“How much? Two dollars?”
“No. Four million.”
Kara almost choked to death on her cookie.
Henrik spent a sleepless night struggling to come to terms with Bonnie’s death. Before the police arrived, he fled in the opposite direction of Roland, who now seemed to dislike Henrik as much as it was humanly possible to do so. Henrik felt himself close to tears for the first time since he struggled to write that poem.
In his search for self-realization, he’d only pictured death in abstract terms. It had been a theoretical notion and one that always seemed so far off in the future that it wasn’t even all that frightening. Now that he’d seen death close up, he was very afraid. He didn
’t know what to do or who to talk to. He tried to call Parminder to hear more about Nanak but that Betty Sue woman answered the toll-free number again and informed him that no one named Parminder worked in their office. To test whether or not she was lying, Henrik said he desperately wanted to purchase an Ab Lounger Deluxe and when she hesitated, he called Betty Sue a liar and demanded to speak to Parminder immediately or else he would hang up the phone and call the handsome and heroic Chris Hansen from Dateline NBC and order him do a revealing exposé on how the disingenuous Christian cable networks outsource their phone centers to India where Sikh people are forced to work for crappy wages.
Betty Sue told Henrik to fuck off and hung up.
Henrik threw his telephone against the wall and stomped around his apartment like a madman, incensed that not only had all his efforts failed to lead him any closer to becoming unique, but in addition, he’d neglected the entire time to examine death and the absolute finality of it all.
To Henrik, the end of his life would be like the fate of the Titanic on that April night of 1912. The iceberg had been struck and the ship was going down. Some of the passengers had escaped onto lifeboats, but of those destined to perish, Henrik could never have found purpose the way those brave men in the vessel’s bowels did by stoking the engine’s fires to keep the power on until the very last moment. Henrik should have been content to have been one of those courageous souls. Yet what he wanted more than anything was to be noble: inspired and inspiring in the face of the infinite black void, much like the violinist in the string quartet who played on as the ship floundered. Steadfast, the violinist’s melodies sprayed out into the air, the last gasp of an artist dripping blue into the midnight sky. Henrik would have given his left arm to go down like that.
He could never hope to be first violin, not second violin or even the viola player. Henrik would have been lucky to have been the cellist, droning unnoticed in the background, eddying into the water’s black abyss while being completely disregarded by the panicked passengers, the masterful violinists and even by himself.
The Three Fates of Henrik Nordmark: A Novel Page 15