A Mound Over Hell

by Gary Morgenstein

  The clerk looked up. “Where did you lose it?”

  It took Puppy a second. “The Lifecard? He doesn’t know.”

  “I don’t even know what the hell it is,” Mick yelled.

  The clerk disapprovingly fingered the application.

  “He had an accident,” Puppy said.

  “Did you file a police report?” the clerk asked hopefully.

  “No.”

  “I fell on my head,” Mick threw in. “I was drunk.”

  The clerk grunted. “Where?”

  “Usually at Toots Shor’s joint. Also my own place on Central Park West.”

  “Manhattan.” Puppy raised a knowing eyebrow. “Before.”

  The clerk narrowed his eyes. “So you lost it outside the Bronx.”

  “I don’t know,” Mick snapped. “Might still be in my coffin.”

  “So the Lifecard could just be misplaced.”

  “Probably not.” Puppy brushed aside any optimism.

  “You must look for it.”

  “How can he look for the Lifecard if he doesn’t know where he lost it?”

  “Until then, it’s merely misplaced. “

  “Does that mean he can’t get one?”

  The clerk frowned. “He can. It’s just more work.”

  Puppy smiled apologetically, which had the effect of hitting a meteor with a stick. The clerk chewed on his lower lip and typed into his computer.

  “And the bathroom is where?” Mick whined.

  “In a second,” Puppy snapped.

  The clerk looked up, slightly puzzled. “There is no record of a Lifecard issued to Mickey Mantle.”

  Mick stood, ready to roll. Puppy tugged him back down.

  “Are you sure?”

  The clerk’s watery eyes glistened with indignation. “Of that name, yes. Perhaps the gentlemen used other names.”

  Puppy nudged Mick to answer.

  “The Mick. The Commerce Comet. I was a jet before I tore up my knee.” He rolled up his right pants leg to show a nasty scar on the knee. He rolled the pants back down thoughtfully.

  “We do not use nicknames for official documents,” the clerk said icily.

  “Mick, you have a middle name?”

  “Would help,” the clerk turned toward his keyboard, eager for this to end.

  “Charles. Mickey Charles Mantle,” he said proudly.

  The clerk’s search came up empty. This was especially annoying. Lost or misplaced Lifecards were easy enough because he could send them elsewhere after he stamped a couple documents. Never registered, that was sticky.

  “Have you ever had a Lifecard, sir?” the clerk asked.

  “Not that I remember,” Mickey said. “Now I really gotta pee.”

  Mantle bolted down the hallway, where he could be heard shouting “where’s the fucking bathroom this is a medical emergency.”

  “It isn’t good to never have a Lifecard, is it?” Puppy asked once the commotion outside quieted down. The clerk shook his head. “What does it mean?”

  “From my long experience, usually the person or persons…”

  “There’s only one person involved. I have a Lifecard.”

  “Person. For now.” The clerk raised a warning eyebrow. “It’s illegal.”

  “Illegal.”

  “Yes,” the clerk said meaningfully.

  “Well, maybe, but he’s off in the head.”

  “Yet you took him out of The Facility. If you’d kept him there, no one would’ve cared. Out here, he needs to live.”

  “Isn’t it illegal either way?”

  The clerk flushed. “Yes sir, it is illegal. My advice is to return him to The Facility. Sounds a little harsh. I know you people stick together.”

  Puppy thought about how wonderful it would feel to hit the clerk in the face. “I’m a Reg now,” he forced out the words between clenched teeth.

  The clerk’s eyes fluttered disdainfully. “I’ll do you a favor. I’ll mark this request pending and we’ll schedule another appointment for next week. That’ll give you an opportunity to decide what’s best for Mr. Mantle and the Family. It could be that he simply shouldn’t be out here, roaming around.”

  “There was no fucking toilet paper.” Mick returned, zipping up his fly.

  • • • •

  ZELDA WALKED AROUND the couch, arms crossed, big brown eyes narrowing and widening as she inspected the sleeping Mick.

  “He seems harmless.”

  “Wait until his bladder wakes up.”

  She rubbed Puppy’s arm. “I’m proud of you for doing something that goes against your grain.”

  “It’s just until he gets on his feet, Zelda. Don’t get carried away.”

  “I’m not.” She paused. “Those your old fat clothes?” She gestured at the blue flannel shirt and khaki pants fitting Mick like a blanket on an elephant.

  “Better than his undies dipped in raw sewage.” Puppy shook his head, sitting on the edge of the chair. “What happens during the day when I have appointments?”

  Zelda grinned. “Wall to wall, are we?”

  “Yes. I’ve got the ex-spouse tomorrow.”

  “Take Mickey. I’d love to see the bitch’s response.”

  Puppy smiled at that. “I can’t take him anywhere without a Lifecard in case we get stopped.”

  “Why would you?”

  “Because he’s crazy. He went off on the way back when he saw some couples. Let’s say he’s not enlightened on how people might pair up.” Puppy shook his head. “How is someone not in the system?”

  “That’s not his real name, stupid.” Zelda rolled her eyes. “Once he settles in…”

  “Only for a few days…”

  “Things will come back to him.”

  Why choose that particular name? Puppy wondered. “So could you watch him tomorrow morning before school?”

  “I’m kind of not at the school anymore.”

  “I thought it was just probation?”

  “I pulled out before it went on my record. This way it can be all so positive, Ms. Jones advanced the children’s artistic sensibilities and has now moved on to another constructive role in the Family. Fucking entitled Regs and their brats.”

  “What’s the new constructive role?”

  Zelda hesitated. “Marketing.”

  He waited skeptically.

  “Selling salmon.”

  “Grandma’s anus, Zelda.”

  “I’m practical. Saul’s Salmon is a great company.”

  “I think I saw their advert,” Puppy said unhappily.

  “The guy with the yellow slicker?” she asked. Puppy nodded. “That’s Howie Herman’s House of Gills. Our guy wears a purple slicker. Shows how important they are by using Grandma’s favorite color. Now with the government finally opening up fishing lanes for healthy fish instead of the faux shit we eat, there might be a real future.”

  “With salmon.”

  “Can you be a little more supportive since I hate myself for doing this?”

  Puppy took her hand. “I don’t want you giving up things you love. Like I have to.”

  “I’ll paint pictures of baseball players, how’s that?”

  Mickey groaned and sat up, peeved at the two intruders. “You a girl?”

  Zelda held out her hand. “Zelda Jones.”

  Mickey held her palm a little too eagerly. “Because girls and boys ain’t the same here.”

  “I’m a total girl. All original parts, Mr. Mantle.” Zelda modeled by walking around the couch. Puppy blinked Zelda a warning as Mick rubbed his hands together.

  “So I see.” Mick smirked. “Your girlfriend’s a looker, kid.”

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” Puppy said quickly.

  “Just friends.” Zelda sat beside Mantle. “Childhood friends. See that scar?” She twisted her jaw to the left. “Some assholes threw rocks at me the day I moved into the DV. I was thirteen. My hero Puppy jumped off a wall and knocked two of them out cold and sent the third running and scr
eaming.”

  “Not before he got this.” Puppy pointed to a scar above his left eyebrow.

  Mick grunted approval. “What’s a DV?”

  Puppy and Zelda exchanged baffled looks. He took this one. “Disappointment Village, Mickey. You know, where the…” His voice trailed off, perplexed.

  “I don’t know.”

  Zelda squeezed Mick’s hand. “DVs are where people who fail have to live until they can get their shit together and find jobs or careers or something to prove they’re productive members of society. Sometimes they make it and sometimes they don’t. That doesn’t mean they’re bad people if they don’t.”

  “A slum?” Mickey found a half bottle of beer on the floor and drained it.

  “Slums, ghettos, those were places of filth and poverty where everyone gave up, Mickey,” Zelda continued in the sing song voice she reserved for when she wanted to be especially annoyingly patronizing. “DVs are places of genuine opportunity. Someday they’ll be all gone. Everyone will have a positive place in the Family.” She tossed a pained look at Puppy.

  Mantle scratched his hand. “Sounds like a lot of crap. Speaking of…” He rumbled into the bathroom.

  Zelda stared down the hallway. “Feel. Awful.”

  Puppy picked up the empty beer bottles. “Good. You can do his dishes.”

  • • • •

  PUPPY HURRIED DOWN Jerome Avenue; either arriving a little late or a little early having the same mixed benefits of pissing off Annette. Ahead, cars crept along Fordham Road as if linked by chains along their axles. The explosion of auto production intended to show the world after the war that America had gone back to its roots as the engine of manufacturing, feel these greasy biceps, we have our own oil so up yours, Allahs, had turned the country into an extended parking lot.

  Puppy paused for a black coffee in the lobby of the Family Room, besieged by interminable video loops of happy couples talking about all they’ve shared, surrounded by growing numbers of children. Like building blocks, Couple A would show off their baby and, on the next screen, Couple B would have a grown child, followed by Couple C with two and Couple D with three until you ventured into grandparent land where they were engulfed by their children and their grandchildren squealing delightedly, all vids ending with Grandma’s proud smile and her Third Insight: “There is no Family without a family.”

  Boisterous happy couples holding hands strolled past to sign up for their marriage licenses on the second floor. Other loving and adoring citizens, eyes brimming with endless wells of endless love, headed to receive extended benefits for upcoming children, either their own or adopted. That was the third floor.

  On the fourth floor were the celebrants. One, five, ten, fifteen, twenty years, pick a number, if you made the wedding anniversary, you received some award. Furniture, car, clothes. The lobby echoed with videos of couples talking about their love and offering tips to siblings like Puppy, sipping black coffee and absorbing, well, barraged with wisdom from Alvin Dalton and William Li on their secret to happiness (a joke a day) or Pamela Landers and Patricia Pannarassa (cooking together, just chop chop chop and you’ll never mope mope mope) they beamed.

  Love joy pleasure family Family children passion commitment.

  Then there was the fifth floor for people getting divorced. Grandma’s belief was that you were never contaminated, but uplifted. Positive always triumphed even if you were too damn thick to understand. Making the divorcing couples share the same building as all these wonderful men and women immersed in love joy pleasure family Family children passion commitment would inspire reconsideration, a re-memory, a new path, a second chance, a nudge, a shove to where you’d once been and how you might get back there to love joy pleasure family Family children passion commitment.

  You never knew what happened on the fifth floor. The first few times Puppy met Annette for their sessions, he was whisked into a room by a couple so delirious they about floated, where they asked him about his feelings of love, insisting he make up a song on the spot.

  “I wish I were in love

  Then I would feel like a dove

  Just give me a cue

  And I will love you”

  He was able to use these catchy lyrics for further encounters/kidnappings, but Annette screamed rape when she was lured into an emotional intervention. Word got around. Leave those two alone.

  But if you pulled back from the brink, oh boy. Just say you’re willing to try again and you and your potential love mate would be whisked away for a weekend in the Catskill Mountains to splash about in undulating bathtubs where a saucy HG oozed out of the faucet cooing about emotional longevity and multiple orgasms. Grandma was not a prude; sex was important in a marriage. If the massages and fine Wisconsin champagne and all that undulating worked, you might be taken from the monthly pre-divorce meetings and put into a marriage counseling group where you would be revered for your incredible courage in seeing the light of love joy pleasure family Family children passion commitment.

  Suddenly you weren’t filing for divorce. You were a success story. You’d be on the vidnews. In the lobby. The fourth floor. Perhaps lurking in small rooms to persuade bitter men to compose music. Maybe someday, if you didn’t throw yourself under the D train, you’d make it to fifty years of marriage and have eggs and coffee with Grandma. Real eggs and coffee.

  Then there was Annette and Puppy.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Annette Ramos angrily pushed back her curly black hair, suggesting it was his fault the strands had dropped onto her olive-skinned forehead.

  Puppy slid a folding chair by the table and nodded to the wary, silent guard. When they first started six months ago, enduring the more than five year cooling off period for time to reconsider their clearly stupid decision to divorce, they’d had an always smiling facilitator, eager to jump right in and smooth out any disputes. They’d gone through several facilitators. Now they’d been assigned a guard. Violence was not uncommon in these situations.

  “I have a life.” Puppy placed his coffee on the table.

  “Like I don’t?” Annette took the cup. “Is this mine?”

  “No.” He sipped quickly so she’d think he spit into the coffee.

  “Very unselfish, Puppy.” Annette applauded sarcastically. She looked gorgeous, with her hair sweeping onto her bare shoulders, large breasts struggling to come up for air in the low cut dress. The better she looked, the more she tormented him.

  Their wedding video ran on a small screen on the table. Photos from their marriage were taped to the walls; smiling and happy Puppy and Annette. Several pieces of jewelry, birthday gifts to her, sat mockingly on a waist-high silver end table from their original apartment.

  “Are you looking at the tape and thinking how much older I am?” Annette asked, worried.

  “I wasn’t thinking anything.” He sighed.

  Usually they sat in silence for the first few minutes, glaring, until the guard coughed, signaling they could sit in silence the entire hour but he would report their lack of effort at reconciliation.

  “How are you?” Puppy kicked things off.

  “Good. Busy.” She held up her left shoe, red with gold buckles. “My new line. Business at my store is wonderful.”

  “Great.”

  Annette exhaled slow disgust. “You don’t care.”

  “Not really.”

  “And you?”

  “Baseball season started a couple days ago.”

  Annette rolled her eyes.

  “Right.” Puppy looked up at the picture of them on their honeymoon in Eastchester, Annette licking a vanilla ice cream cone melting down her chin, while he stuck out his tongue hopefully. She caught the look.

  “Are you going to stare at old photos all hour?”

  “That’s why they’re there.”

  Annette grimaced, clearly sharing the oxygen with him a painful burden. “Well I have news.” She played with her gold bracelet. “I met someone.”

  “Again?”<
br />
  “Yes, Puppy. Again. I do want to be happy because unlike you, I want a real relationship.”

  “Who’s the lucky guy?”

  “Someone very accomplished,” she said with a mysterious air. “A name you would know.”

  “Is it Grandma?”

  “Fuck you, Puppy.”

  “Sorry. I’m very happy for you.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Then I’m not.”

  “Because I’m very happy.” She paused. “Elias and I are in love.”

  “I hope so.” Puppy frowned. “Otherwise it is mere illicit lust.” He wagged his finger.

  “We want to get engaged.”

  Puppy felt an unwelcome twinge. “Oh. Great.”

  “Engaged means marriage is next, Puppy.”

  That was the final tripwire. You couldn’t get remarried until your ex found someone, otherwise the Family had a resentful, angry, embittered sibling running around. It was much better to have two resentful, angry, embittered siblings running around.

  “What do you want me to say, Annette? In another six months, we’re done with the attempts and free.” Even Grandma admitted that it wasn’t fair, when all had been exhausted, for bitterness to triumph over love. But it was firmly noted in the permanent files.

  “I don’t want failure on my record,” Annette said. “You’re used to that.”

  Puppy gripped the edge of the table; the guard stirred. He had read the reports on these two.

  “I want to do this right. I find someone. You find someone.” Annette took off one of her dangling Grandma-like earrings, staring at the purplish stone as if it would somehow undo the huge mistake she’d made marrying him. “Are you at least dating?”

  “I don’t have time.”

  “Why, Puppy, why? You don’t have a real job. You should have time for countless dates. Every night, someone new.”

  “Since I don’t have a real job, how could I afford such merriment?”

  Annette unzipped her purse. The guard rose out of his seat until he was sure she wasn’t pulling a weapon. She showed everyone her wallet. “I will pay for your dates. Some of them. Drinks, an occasional meal if it seems promising. Anything. Please, Puppy. I want to be married. Have babies. Lots of babies. And be happy.”

  The muted wedding video showed them dancing. He could hear the band, a terrible three-piece group with the awful singer who Pablo hired, wailing it out and yet somehow, the worst singer in the West Bronx made their special dance, their song, their wedding song, “The Beatles’ I Want to Hold Your Hand sound good. Sound right. Sound happy.