Side Effects

by Harvey Jacobs

  “Wanda said you were a smart kid. She was right. You’ve got perspective.” Mayor Crimmins sat on a Coca Cola case from the forties. “She also told me you were asking questions about lights and ghosts near the watch factory.”

  “Word does travel fast,” Simon said.

  “She stopped by my office for a quick chat on her way to Wainscott. I thought maybe you and I should discuss the matter further.”

  “All I know is what I saw. I didn’t mean to make too much of it. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a non-event. There’s no reason for anybody to get nervous.”

  “Nervous? Who said anything about nervous?”

  “I just got the impression that you’re a little fidgety,” Simon said. “I know I am. It’s those drums. They sound like a heart from an Edgar Allen Poe story.”

  “I own the watch factory,” Mayor Crimmins said. “It’s easily the most valuable piece of real estate in Serene Harbor. Centrally located, water view. For two decades I’ve planned to turn it into a complex of condominiums. Top of the line. But my dream has been frustrated by pussy-brained environmentalists and a senile historical society.”

  “You mean just because it’s a toxic site and a landmark?”

  “See? You’ve been here a few months and already you’re indoctrinated. Spreading false rumors. The factory and its surrounding lands have been cleaned and declared safe by the EPA. It was one of the first allegedly contaminated facilities reclaimed by Superfund monies.”

  “I heard the neighbors paid for an independent survey that showed radiation levels a little lower than downtown Chernobyl. Isn’t the whole matter in the courts?”

  “It is,” Mayor Crimmins said. “It has been for the better part of fifteen years. At this rate it will be for another fifty. And every day I walk past that building instead of seeing a beautiful harmony of homes I’m forced to look at a shit pile.”

  “I’m sorry,” Simon said. “But however it happened, I did see a light in a window up near the roof. And I did meet a very small old man who ran inside the factory.”

  “Which is what I came to talk about,” Mayor Crimmins said. “I wouldn’t want you to discuss your fantasy with anybody else.”

  “It wasn’t a fantasy,” Simon said. “And I didn’t plan to discuss it with anybody. I just mentioned it to Mrs. Hubbard. Then you showed up.”

  “Let’s not make too much of this,” Mayor Crimmins said. “Good Lord, that noise is unbearable. No wonder you’re seeing things.”

  “I am not seeing things. There was a light and a kind of pygmy in fatigues wearing a Brooklyn Dodgers cap who ran inside your building.”

  “We’ll continue this conversation at some future date,” Mayor Crimmins said. “My head is swimming. In the meantime, Simon, remember that loose lips sink ships.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “A World War Two expression. I mean it would be best to shut up about—”

  “I’ve got the message,” Simon said.

  Martha Marie accented the mayor’s departure with a series of elephant hoof beats that rattled the cups, dinner plates and ironstone pitchers that once gave pleasure to the residents of Serene Harbor’s cemeteries. One flower-covered cup, nearest the lip of the shelf it shared with seven identical siblings, surrendered to the assault of vibrations, teetered, tipped, and fell toward a box of rusty farm tools. Simon made a dive for it but missed the rescue by the length of a finger. It smashed against an iron wrench and dissolved into a shower of porcelain chips.

  After he cleaned up the pieces, Simon sucked at a few drops of blood dribbling from a slash across his palm. The cut was nothing deep or serious, but enough of a gash to add insult to injury. Seven demitasse cups violated a basic tenet of antique lore; when it came to cups, service for eight added huge value. Service for seven was damn near impossible to sell even at a gigantic discount.

  Wanda Hubbard would be livid when she saw the damage and Simon knew she’d vent her venom at him. She might even insist on deducting value-lost from his pay and she could make a reasonable case for the subtraction. Simon had been left in charge of the store—Wanda’s trusted guard dog—and he’d failed in his duty. Blaming Martha Marie’s heavy hands was a waste of time. Granny would never turn on her precious visitor.

  Simon braced to take the jolt in the Cup Tragedy. He wrapped an embroidered linen dish towel around his bleeding wound, put the back in five minutes sign on the store’s outer door, and dashed upstairs to where Martha Marie clashed cymbals as if she were executing imps between the brass spheres. He found her sitting on a stool in her room, stark naked except for a blindfold fashioned from one of Wanda Hubbard’s good napkins—the ones she used for special dinner parties, emblazoned with hibiscus blooms in reds and pinks.

  “You’ve got to quit being the little drummer girl,” Simon said. “Things are breaking down in the store. You’re driving everybody crazy including the mayor.”

  Martha Marie lowered her volume, brushed her cymbals with soft strokes, and threw her head forward so that her blonde hair fell like rain covering her breasts and mingling with her pubic garden. “I hear a voice,” Martha Marie said, “but I can’t place it.”

  “Take the napkin off and you’ll place it,” Simon said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Martha Marie said. “What matters is that my music drew whoever you are to the source of sound.” She upped the beat again. This time she tossed her head backward so yellow hair flew in all directions. At that moment it occurred to Simon that he was talking to a naked woman except for her fancy blindfold. Somehow that significant fact hadn’t struck home before. He was concentrated on the ruined service-for-eight set of demitasse cups.

  Martha Marie’s whole body, bouncing breasts to swaying shoulders, twitching thighs to flaring nostrils, moved in counterpoint to the measured thunder of her bass drum. In a seamless motion she somehow managed to flip her long legs over the bass and straddle them around a large bongo that must have come from a closet or attic in the Hubbard house. She traded her drumsticks for hands and slapped the bongo with so much force Simon could swear he saw smoke rise from its punished hide though he realized it had to be dust.

  Simon wondered how many cups and saucers were abandoning inertia for flight from their shelves downstairs. It was the last rational thought he had.

  Simon felt a terrific pain between his legs. His scrotum filled with syrup. He heard a pop much louder than Martha Marie’s drum, more like the insolent sonic boom of a jet fighter. The Stalagamide, with an assist from the drummer, fulfilled its promise. The drug kicked in with a vengeance.

  Simon Apple’s penis stiffened and shot out of some anatomical cave where it had been hiding—it presented itself with such conviction that it managed to split apart the metal teeth that zippered his fly.

  The next thing Simon remembered was riding Martha Marie like a surfer on a Hawaiian wave.

  “I knew you had to have me,” Martha Marie yelled on a note of triumph. His own yell, “Thank you!” matched Martha Marie’s enthusiasm and pleased her greatly. She had no way of knowing Simon Apple was addressing a pantheon of gods and goddesses. She said, “You’re welcome,” as if he was talking to her. She began to slap his head in a jungle rhythm. Simon, a willing bongo, heard himself making sounds he recognized from a movie about agitated Zulus.

  At the exact moment Simon and Martha Marie came together, radio and television signals in Serene Harbor lost coherence.

  TV pictures turned to white dots streaming across a black abyss of screen. AM and FM radio reception became the howl of feral cats.

  Telephones still worked but carried fading voices barely perceptible through a mesh of static.

  Calls went out to the cable company, local stations, the police and fire departments. Serene Harbor was off the grid, denied access to its soap operas, talk shows, popular music, news anchors, wrestling, even the balm of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood and Sesame Street.

  This terrible electronic separation from the world beyond their ice-boun
d town was unknown to Martha Marie and Simon. They fucked like lions through the afternoon and into evening.

  When Wanda Hubbard returned from her scouting trip she stepped over wrecked sets of china and glass, climbing two steps at a time, following the squeak of exhausted bedsprings where Simon and Martha Marie still copulated, oblivious to her ranting and protests.

  “You signed an oath of premarital celibacy in church,” Wanda said. “In church! This doesn’t look like celibate behavior to me.”

  “He seduced me, he inflicted himself upon me,” Martha Marie said peering out from between Simon’s legs. “He ravaged me. Call the cops.”

  “You slept with the cops last year,” Wanda said. “Local and State.”

  “Well, I feel misused,” Martha Marie said.

  “Can I get a word in edgewise?” Simon said. “This isn’t what it looks like, Mrs. Hubbard. I mean, it isn’t sex so much as it is affirmation. Martha Marie needs to prove to herself that she exists and the only way she can prove it is to bed any man or boy in the hemisphere. I know I made you a promise and I tried to keep it. God knows, I tried. But there’s only so much temptation a normal human being can resist. As for the broken crockery, I’m perfectly willing to pay for half the damage.” Simon reached down to make sure his genitals retained their suddenly impressive size. They did. “In fact, I’ll pay for all the breakage. And glad to do it. Because miracles have occurred here this afternoon.”

  “I suppose it could be so stated,” Martha Marie said.

  “Good. Because before you leave my house I plan to present you with a bill for the heirlooms you destroyed,” Wanda Hubbard said.

  “Heirlooms?” Simon said. “That’s a huge word to describe your inventory. I felt guilty selling that junk.”

  “Would you mind if we put some clothes on before continuing this conversation?” Martha Marie said to her grandmother. “Whatever romance there was in this assignation is already slipping away from me.”

  “Assignation?” Simon said. “That’s a huge word. What trace of romance there might have been was pulverized by the beat of your tom-toms. However, for all that, you did me a service I can never forget. Don’t worry. They probably won’t use your real name in the medical journals.”

  “What’s he talking about? And who won’t use my real name?”

  “Leave this house, Simon Apple,” Wanda Hubbard said. “Leave Serene Harbor. Get in your bus and drive away. And don’t stop at the Skull & Crossbones to gloat about penetrating my granddaughter. That won’t come as any news. She’s been doing the town since she was fourteen. Like mother, like daughter. She’s a carbon copy of my daughter.”

  “I have no intention of gloating,” Simon said, “except inwardly. But before I go I’d like to make one phone call. Long distance to New York City. You can add time and charges to my breakage bill.”

  When Simon tried to phone Dr. Mercy Merriweather he got nothing but the crackle of static on the receiver. The lines were out, not unusual on icy days. When he hung up the phone, he heard Mother Hubbard cursing out her TV set. There was no sound or picture. She was missing General Hospital. At the same time, Martha Marie was yelling at her radio for its kittenish whining; at first she thought it was New Age music but she quickly realized there was a major problem.

  Telephone, TV, radio—there was some kind of media plague blanketing Serene Harbor.

  When he heard about the disturbance, Simon assumed those astronomical freckles called sunspots were to blame or possibly some nuclear riot in outer space or a seizure in Earth’s magnetic field—one of those phenomena beyond control that periodically remind humans of shared insignificance in a screw-you universe.

  Whatever the cause, it probably didn’t signify the end of the world; the problem would soon abate—wires, transmitters, receivers would hum again, invisible signals would fill the air with the usual mix of sustaining gibberish.

  Before he became fully aware of Serene Harbor’s communications deprivation, Simon knew only that Wanda Hubbard’s phone was having one of its frequent winter tantrums. No big deal. He could contact Dr. Merriweather later with the amazing news of his restored, actually improved, dimensions. His magnificent erection was still intact; Simon was thankful that Granny didn’t make a fuss about that though she couldn’t help noticing.

  Simon wasn’t particularly sorry about failing to reach the doctor’s office. She would insist on dissecting the miracle of Simon’s second puberty. There was plenty of time for blood tests, X-rays and probes. Before relegating his rescue to impersonal explanation, Simon was happy to feel the immediate poetry of redemption.

  74

  Simon left Wanda Hubbard’s house that evening before dinner. There was no time to say goodbye to Martha Marie who was asleep, in recovery. When Simon had settled accounts with his employer—low on cash after paying her damages but high on the bulge that still filled his pants—he walked outside to his minibus carrying his things in a duffel bag slung over his shoulder.

  It was snowing again, the temperature well below zero. Simon turned the ignition key, relieved when the old battery coughed and drooled enough power to wake the icy engine and animate the windshield wipers.

  He had no idea of where to find accommodations he could afford on such short notice. His first thought was to head for the Skull & Crossbones where one of the regulars might have a room to let. Chances were nobody in Serene Harbor would rent to him, not if they asked Mother Hubbard for a reference which they would. The natives circled their wagons where loyalty was concerned and Simon was outside the circle. Besides, in that dreary weather the bar would close early.

  A mound of snow already blocked the entrance to the park where Simon had camped when he first drove into town. With no obvious options, the Skull & Crossbones was worth a try.

  Luckily, there was a sign of life at the town oasis. Simon could see bodies moving behind the bar’s steaming window. He parked across the street and jumped down from the bus into a slapping wind and slush deeper than the tops of his boots. As he was about to yank at the brass fishtail knob of the Skull & Crossbones storm door, Simon reminded himself that he still carried a boner in his pants. He hunched forward and arranged his sheepskin coat to conceal the obelisk as best as he could.

  Inside, it didn’t take long for Simon to realize he was already branded as an outcast. The only sign of recognition came from carrot-shaped Mayor Evan Crimmins, bent over a game of pinball called Silent Cinema Hits or Misses. The mayor was trying to guide a silver ball toward a hole between the waving legs of a girl tied across a railroad track as a streamlined locomotive roared toward her. The girl was labeled Save the Starlet—5000 Points! Her bare legs flapped back and forth while the locomotive’s whistle blended with her recorded screams.

  Mayor Crimmins smacked the sides of the pinball machine but the jolts couldn’t stop his ball getting kicked across the game board by her flailing legs toward another hole marked Gone with the Wind. As the ball rimmed that ominous abyss and fell inside, Mayor Crimmins kicked at the machine. A siren wailed and the glass screen flashed Tilt!! The End!! “Damn,” the mayor said, “fuck me.”

  He gave Simon a limp wave. Simon waved back, grateful for the attention. “Look who just walked in here,” the mayor said. “The little drummer’s boy.” The three men and one woman bellied up to the bar laughed and made wet noises. “I hear you had some trouble with your landlady,” Mayor Crimmins said while he made a circle with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand and penetrated it with the index finger of his right.

  “So the word is out,” Simon said. “And I thought the phones were kaput.”

  “We have our ways,” the mayor said. “Kid, you’ve got to understand that Martha Marie is someone we hold near and dear in Serene Harbor. She’s like a church or a war monument—a gift from above, a rallying point, a place where us simple guys and gals can come to be reminded of better weather. We feel a geographical and spiritual kinship with Martha Marie. She stirs sweet memories.”

&
nbsp; “He means she’s equal opportunity twat,” the woman at the bar said.

  “That was vulgar,” Mayor Crimmins said. “Uncalled for.”

  “I don’t think you’ll sue me,” the woman said. “You been there once or twice, Your Honor.”

  “How long have you been a guest in Serene Harbor?” the mayor said to Simon who was wiping his wet face with a paper napkin.

  “A few months.”

  “It was Wanda Hubbard who took you in. And you forced yourself on her beloved granddaughter contrary to a verbal contract between you and the aforesaid.”

  “I wouldn’t put it that way. Wanda, Mother, Granny, whatever, Mrs. Hubbard didn’t exactly offer sanctuary. She gave me a job below minimum wage and let me park my minibus on her property. You know damn well I didn’t force myself on Martha Marie Hoffer. You were in the shop today. You heard those drums. It was like a cannibal office party. That wasn’t music we heard; it was palpitating. There are just so many palpitations a man can endure. I won’t go into details, sorry to disappoint you, but I am telling you that what transpired between myself and a certain young lady was entirely consensual. Add to that, inspirational. I was bone again, nothing less.”

  “The expression is born again,” Mayor Crimmins said. “Lad, whatever claims you make, it’s better that you leave Serene Harbor. We have no tolerance for sexual predators. Wanda Hubbard’s accusation is tantamount to condemnation and conviction. We would prefer to keep our daughters pure for as long as possible, as naive as that may sound to someone devoid of morals.”

  “Fine,” Simon said. “But where can I go on a night like this? Don’t worry, I’m willing to pay for a bed.”