"Dinner will be served in the main dining room at nine o'clock this evening," I said.
BISMARCK, BARBAROSSA, and I entered the utility drawer in the base cabinet, the one truly chaotic site in the apartment—when Ira had transferred the contents from the old cabinets he had resignedly dumped it all in. The nails, tacks, tape measures, can openers, corkscrews, plastic bags, wrapping paper, twine, screw drivers, oil can, plastic straws, scissors, glue, and so on had over the years formed an organic whole. Our interest, the flashlight, lay on one side of the drawer.
"Do you think we could get something between the bulb and the batteries, or in between the batteries?" I said.
Barbarossa shook his head. "Forget it. How are you going to get in there?"
"Break it open, you animal," said Bismarck. "Shatter it with your very might."
Barbarossa's face lit with joy and fury, as if all his life he had been waiting for such an invitation. He burrowed to the bottom of the drawer and returned with a small finishing nail. He rocked rhythmically, then hurled it against the plastic lens. While he was still following through with his motion, the nail ricocheted and struck him between the eyes, knocking him into the eye of a ball of twine.
Bismarck laughed. Suddenly the flashlight lurched to the side, nearly crushing him and me. It wasn't the force of the nail. Barbarossa had set off some Rube Goldbergian reaction while he was rummaging.
Bismarck climbed to the top of the lens. "See this? If somebody pulls open the drawer, it's going to drive the screwdriver right through the bulb."
I climbed up beside him. "Looks a little low to me." We could no more lift the flashlight than the refrigerator. So Bismarck and I pulled on twine, string, and ribbons, and Barbarossa, now recovered, pulled on the big stuff. But a half hour of strenuous labor didn't move the flashlight another micron. We were ready to quit.
Almost as an afterthought Barbarossa lifted the end of swizzle stick topped with the NAACP shield. Things started to rumble. Bismarck and I ran for the corners, tacks sliding and batteries roiling past us. When all was calm I raised my head. The flashlight had moved again.
"I can see the lights of Paris!" said Bismarck from the tip of the screwdriver.
IN THE HALLWAY we ran into Goosh and Mayhem Vibram, who were carrying two huge chunks of rubber cement. We all walked to the hall closet.
The fourth instar was lying on the floor between a pair of galoshes. One wire lay beside him.
I said, "We agreed on six."
"Get the rest yourself," he said. "Where's my food?"
We walked up the cord into the vacuum cleaner. Sleeping nymphs lay beside three more lengths of wire. I hadn't expected even this many.
We paired the wires and girdled them with the rubber cement. Barbarossa carried one pair to Ira's kitchen, and the Vibrams took the other back to the Wainscotts' kitchen.
One last touch remained. I had brought a strand of Elizabeth's scarf back with me to Ira's living room. Now I laid it in the black matte ashtray, which he kept spotless to discourage people from smoking. It set off the wool perfectly.
Now hurry home, Ira. We're waiting.
Last Licks
THE DOOR OPENED, and in came my hero. He took the hall in a jaunty step, whistling spiritedly off-key. Seated in his favorite chair in the living room, he spread out the newspaper on the coffee table and skimmed the headlines. This was usually an intense search, scissors ready, for the urban horror stories that were grist for his moral mill. But today Ira didn't seem to really read anything.
When Ruth arrived, he sprang up and met her with a kiss just inside the threshold. "Princess!" he said, bowing like an eighteenth-century courtier. Somehow chivalry couldn't wear brown double-vents.
"Ira?" She squeezed her three shopping bags past him and put them on the kitchen counter, then turned warily to face him. "Good day?"
"Why yes!" he sang. "And you?" A formality. He wanted to talk.
"Not particularly," she said, on her way to the closet with her coat. Ira followed like a well-trained pup.
"Then let's start with the good day." He took her hand and led her to the living room sofa. I trailed them in the long shadows of the late-afternoon light. Ira bounced as if he had bladder trouble. "James Jackson has been granted a retrial."
"James Jackson, James Jackson. Oh, wasn't he the one who put his common-law wife through a meat grinder and tried to sell her to McDonald's?"
"Burger King. 'Special orders don't upset us.' No, that was James Johnson, now Abdullah-Aziz Johnson. He's still at County being evaluated."
"James Jackson. Let's see. He sprinkled angel dust on his malted and went for the land speed record in his, let's see, Plymouth, right? Down the sidewalk at rush hour?"
Ira beamed. "That's the one. You'll never believe it I didn't find out until today that he wasn't read his rights."
Ruth got up. "That's great, honey. I've got to start dinner. I told them seven o'clock."
Ira and I followed her to the kitchen. He said, "The arresting officer said it would have been a waste of time because the perpetrator was so high."
"Well, maybe he had something there." She pulled packages from her shopping bags. Ira scored a pastry before Ruth shut the box on his fingers.
"Come on, Ruth. How can you say that? In an adversarial system the police are hardly the ones to decide when a suspect should be read his rights." He reached for another pastry. He was impishly buoyant tonight. The timing was all wrong.
Ruth snatched the box and put it back in the shopping bag. "So are you going to have him released?"
"He did kill four people, so the judge will insist on some psychological rehabilitation, probably group therapy. Vehicular homicide groups have sessions in a parking lot so they can understand what they've done wrong. But the guy has been sitting in an overcrowded jail for three months. That is cruel and unusual punishment."
"Well, let's hope James Johnson gets what is rightly his," she said pleasantly.
"James Jackson."
"Him too."
Ira went to change out of his good shoes, then returned to wash the vegetables. To my surprise Ruth started disjointing the bird. It would not be roasted after all.
Ira quickly finished. "And now?"
"The salad. And after you have to wash the mushrooms one at a time. They were all gritty last time."
He did as he was told. "Done. How are you doing the chicken?"
"A stew. I thought it would be nice for a change. First I have to sauté the parts."
Ira stretched on tip toes for the frying pan. "Isn't it handy to have a Titan around the. . ." As soon as he pulled it from the pegboard he saw the body. "Jesus Christ!" he screamed. The pan bounced off the iron stove supports with a terrible clang, and came to rest between the burners.
Ruth and I flinched; I cracked the last joint in my back left leg, and she gashed her thumb with the cooking knife. "What?" she cried. "What happened? Are you all right?"
Ira pointed at the pan and hissed. "Look!"
"Oh dear." Wrapping her bleeding thumb with the other palm, Ruth stepped over to the stove. Awkwardly grasping the pan handle, she dumped the body into the sink and washed it down the drain. She swirled water around the pan and replaced it on the stove. Blood from her thumb dripped quietly to the floor. "There, all gone."
"No, it's not all gone. You don't just rinse away bubonic plague, typhus, dysentery, and all the other disgusting things they carry." Indeed? "I renovated this kitchen for you, Ruth, and you have to put some effort into keeping it clean."
"Don't start that again. You did the renovation because the old one was a monkey cage. I keep this room spotless. I don't know what a harmless little roach was doing in a clean pot but it is not my fault. I am not the ringmaster of the animal kingdom." Her blood continued to drip.
"You know what? Give the roaches my portion. I just lost my appetite." Ira tried to stomp out of the room, but the carbonified outsoles, and double-density medially stabilized insoles of his running shoes
muffled him.
That's it, Ira? You're in danger of dying a terrible, disfiguring death. Don't be taken by these false denials. Ruth is turning your kitchen into a shelter for pernicious vermin. Don't walk out and let her think it's all right.
He wasn't interested in combat today. That damned Miranda ruling must have really juiced him up with endorphins.
But now my long work on Ruth paid off. A week or two earlier she would have gone after him, perhaps even applied the sexual emollient, and after a short break the evening would have continued as if nothing had been said. But tonight she took off her apron, opened her newspaper on the kitchen counter, and tried to read. When Ira finally returned and reminded her of the imminent arrival of the guests, she shrugged. Only when he began to produce strange odors from the pots did she return to the kitchen helm.
WHEN THE DOORBELL rang, dinner was not nearly ready. "Can I help?" said Elizabeth.
Ruth said, "Oh, no, everything's under control. Make yourselves comfortable in the other room. I'll bring something to munch on." Her voice betrayed nothing.
As Oliver walked by the mantel, he reached for the chessboard. "Don't" said Elizabeth. He shrugged and fell into a chair. It was all right; he'd get his chance to do worse.
"Ira, you in there?" he called to the kitchen.
"Yeth." Ira was eating.
"You're helping? Be still my heart. What, did your goldbricker union get you some bogus holiday today?"
Ruth appeared at the doorway, thumb bandaged and wooden spoon in hand. She motioned Ira out of the kitchen. "Why don't you tell Elizabeth and Oliver about your big day."
Oliver said, "Another killer nigger walking free, eh?"
Elizabeth pulled on his arm. "Please don't use that word."
"I'm sorry, dear," he said to her, then loudly, "I mean another killer nigger strutting free, eh?"
Ira said, "He's getting a retrial."
"I have faith in you," said Oliver.
Ira said, "As you might put it, it will be a black day for America when innocent men don't walk."
Ruth arrived with a tray of cheese and crackers. Chevre—an excellent choice; it was impossible to smear this cheese and pick up and chew the cracker without hailing crumbs onto the carpet. Oliver began to gouge the cheese before she set it down. "Manners," said his wife. I would harvest later; there was about twelve hours until the Saturday morning vacuuming. My ambitions tonight were much greater.
Oliver licked the side of the knife. His wife slapped his arm. "Nice," said Ira.
Oliver said, "Ira, I want to bet you that within two months of the walking date—and I know you'll get him one— he'll be back. Whatever he did, and whoever he is." His wife subtly dug her fingernails into the pendulous underside of his arm. "That is, of course, regardless of his color, creed, sex, or previous condition of servitude. But he'll be back."
Ira usually took these provocations with a smile. Not tonight. "It makes me uncomfortable when all we talk about is my work. Tell us what's new in the world of contracting and organized crime."
Oliver looked surprised. "What's wrong with the construction business? You must be confused by the idea of men going to work before they pick up their paychecks."
"No. It's the idea of people ending up at the bottom of the river in concrete Reeboks."
Oliver paused. "That may happen, Ira. I don't deal at that level so I don't really know. If there's a rubout every now and then, to make a big job go smooth, well, what can you do? At least my money's doing something. But when my tax dollars go to you to spring a spook who has been living on the dole so he can blow somebody else away for another hit of drugs, and then go back to court and back to jail on my money, that bothers me."
Ruth turned to him. "That's one of the most awful things I've ever heard."
Oliver shrugged. "Don't be naive. That's what it's like in the real world, where people earn a living."
"Please, Oliver. I am senior financial officer..."
Elizabeth interrupted in a startlingly bright voice. "Ruth, this wool looks like the scarf you gave me. Did you get one for yourself?" She had found the strand I left in the ashtray.
Ruth took it from her. "It does, doesn't it. No, I just got the one."
"Come on, Elizabeth. We all know a scarf like that wouldn't do for Ruth," said Oliver.
Elizabeth's face issued a powerful warning.
"Oh, I don't know," said Ruth. "If gifts started coming my way I wouldn't mind at all."
Come on, Oliver. Tell her you're on to her, that you know she's a cheap kike who buys Korean polyester for her friends and expects Thai silk in return. Tell her, thank you very much, but your fashionably thin wife does not wear filth on the nape of her delicate neck or beneath her single chin.
Oliver looked at his wife and sighed. "I wonder if there is any more Tanqueray." She declined to move, so he waddled back to the kitchen. His thirst for free premium gin was my first miscalculation of the evening.
They moved to the dining room, and Ruth shuttled in the serving dishes. I waited for someone to grow pale and shake as the planted Blattella body rose ethereally to the surface of the stew—the Ascension in 3B.
It didn't happen. The table was simply a portrait of earthly injustice. These fugitives from natural selection crammed while we, the apple of nature's eye, starved. I went back to the bedroom for American Woman and dragged her up the hall to the dining room threshold.
Smack, slurp. "It's wonderful, Ruth."
Hum. "Yeah, really."
Clink. "Oh, damn."
"Quick, pick up the glass. Pour salt over the spill. Get the whole thing. Keep pouring."
"Not the bottle, you sot. The salt."
This was my break. I dragged American Woman across the dining room floor and under the table. The lace table cloth draped to the ground, lending bordello floridity to the setting. The leaves lengthening the table spread the shoes elegantly, and safely, apart.
I called to the baseboard, and Bismarck's head emerged. "Are you inviting me to be the sacrificee?" he asked.
The dialogue above continued:
"Heirlooms get dirty. That's what they're for."
"That's not what they're for."
I said to Bismarck, "You'll never get safer pap than this."
He raced across the floor and skidded right into the waterbug shell. He leaped away, a Blattella reflex.
"Bismarck, please meet American Woman." He shuddered.
Sufur appeared at the opening, and was soon launched by Barbarossa, who climbed out after him. Citizens now came steadily. Everyone I had invited showed up, even the instars from the vacuum cleaner and the extras on the Roach Motel. American Woman could not accommodate all of us at once, so Barbarossa, snarling and straining, snapped her in half along the line of Ira's toe fault. Now we had two dinner tables, two dinners: my friends and I ate one, the Raid orphans, Listerine, Toe Nail, Spic 'n' Span, K-Mart, Ponds, and the rest of the volunteers at the other. The book cripples were there too.
We ate ravenously, Oliver-style. I felt as if our enemy had foolishly granted us a cease-fire, a chance to replenish and rearm, in the heat of the final battle.
"A wonderful meal," said Bismarck. "To you, Numbers."
"A wonderful meal, Ruth," said Elizabeth.
"So let me get this straight," Oliver said. "These two clients of yours have already generated five cadavers."
I was congratulating myself for nurturing his animus with vaginal deprivation when I saw something terrible—T. E. Lawrence, pale, almost yellow, was weaving slowly across the open floor, clearly visible to everyone at the table and beneath it, staggering back every few steps and leaving a bud of green vomit.
I screamed to him to come under the tablecloth. He stopped, and said grandiloquently, "I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands and wrote my will across the sky in stars." He threw up again.
Barbarossa confessed. "The fairy was trying to mount a nymph. It was disgusting. I threw him into the boric acid. I'm not so
rry."
"Don't do it" Bismarck said to me. "They'll get you both."
But I went, straight across the floor, timeless Blattella precepts howling their violation through my head. I grabbed Lawrence's antennae and dragged him under the table.
"I'm sorry," I said, to no one in particular. "I couldn't just leave him out there."
Bismarck said, "You could have and you should have. Here he can only bring us attention. Be sure he doesn't."
Bismarck was right; if Lawrence waltzed out from under the tablecloth, Ira would take a look and we were dead. Why had I done this? Cold fear blew me whispers of Saint Matthew: "Is not the life more than the meat?" Matthew and Lawrence both had to go.
Oliver was saying, "When you spring them is it like in the movies? The warden says: 'Boys, we went easy on you this time. But if we see your candy asses around here again, it's going to get rough.' He hands them a bus ticket and a pack of Camels. Felons hanging on the window bars are yelling, 'See you next month, James. Don't forget your KY.'" He was tapping his eleven EEEs on the floor.
"Ollie, we're at the dinner table," said his wife.
I said to Lawrence, "Come, the Turks are asking for the White God." He primped, then it was easy: I led him under the shoe and Oliver crushed him without knowing. A good soldier to the end, Lawrence rode out the conversation stuck to Oliver's leather.
My compunction had already passed. No one reviled me for this execution; no one bothered to look up from his dinner.
"Where do you read these things? I mean, what channels you watch these things on?" said Ira with a cough, which worsened, then stopped his words. Someone smacked him on the back.
He wheezed. He was still breathing. He would never die so easily. "Are you all right?" said Ruth. Foolish design; if you breathe through your back, food can block your airway only if you roll in it.
I went back to work on American Woman. Snot, who was working toward me, had already eaten his way across the centerline. "Don't eat so fast," I said. "Damn it, it's my shell."
"Don't eat so fast," said Ruth. "It makes you sick, and you won't want dessert If there's any left."
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