by Amy Bloom
“No way, mama. I’d know those hips of yours anywhere. I’ve been thinking about you and was wondering when you would come back again.”
Jimmy’s temper flared when the man brazenly placed both of his hands on Annabelle’s hips. “The lady said she doesn’t know you, buddy. Comprende? So do yourself a favor and back off.”
The trucker’s gold tooth shone bright as a star in the dark. “She knows me all right. She enjoyed nine inches of me the other night. Didn’t you, sweetheart?”
“That’s enough, you goddamn son of a bitch.” Pushing Annabelle aside, Jimmy began to beat the man. He didn’t stop until the trucker looked like a piece of raw veal.
“Come on, Jimmy. Let’s go before the police get here,” Annabelle urged. She began to reach for his hands before realizing they were covered with blood. “Oh, dear. Are your hands all right? Are they hurt?”
He quickly pulled them away. “Don’t worry. I’m fine. I’ve dealt with tougher guys before. Your friend got the worst of it. I think he’s going to be needing another gold tooth.”
Annabelle grew quiet but she’d never been so turned on in her life. Jimmy Carbonara was a lethal weapon and he was all hers.
“Is what that guy said about you back there true? Did you sleep with him?” he angrily demanded as they headed for his store.
Annabelle’s eyes welled up with tears. “No, of course not. How can you even ask that? I’ve never seen him before in my life.”
Jimmy felt like dirt for having questioned her.
* * *
“You’re my hero, Jimmy,” she said while straddling him in bed later that night. “You’re my big, strong protector.”
He cupped her buttocks in his hands and gazed at the swell of her breasts in the moonlight. Jimmy wished she hadn’t made him turn off the lamps. She was probably self-conscious but she’d have to get over that. Annabelle had a terrific body from what he could tell, and he wanted to see every inch of it. So what if she was no spring chicken? Neither was he. How had he gotten so lucky? “I’d do anything for you, Annabelle. You know that.”
“Would you? Would you really? I’ve been hurt so many times, Jimmy. Promise you’ll always protect me and won’t let anyone hurt me anymore.” Leaning over, she kissed him lightly on the lips.
“I swear it,” he said, and meant it.
* * *
Annabelle didn’t show up at his store the next day or the day after that and Jimmy started to worry. What had happened? Had he done something wrong? He stopped by the theater and was shown to her dressing room, where a woman could be heard crying inside.
“Annabelle, is that you? Is everything all right?”
Her eyes were red and swollen when she opened the door.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. Stepping inside, he closed the door behind him.
Annabelle’s bottom lip quivered and her breath caught sharp. “Oh, Jimmy. It’s the director. He’s firing me.”
“What do you mean he’s firing you? What’s he doing that for?”
She placed her head on his chest and he thought for sure that his heart would break.
“Another actress wants the role. She’s a friend of his so he’s letting me go and giving the part to her.”
Lisa Larson was to be her replacement. The woman was the bane of her existence. She’d been making Annabelle’s life a living hell for years. Every role that Annabelle lost seemed to go to her.
“Can he really do that to you?”
Annabelle nodded. “The director can do whatever he wants. This role was supposed to be my big break. What’s going to happen to me now?”
“Don’t worry about that. I’ll take care of you, but it still doesn’t seem right. How about I speak to him for you?” The guy needed to be taught a lesson. Jimmy’s sore knuckles throbbed at the thought. “Maybe I can talk some sense into him. You know, make him see things my way.”
Annabelle’s head lolled on her neck, seeming as weak as a baby bird’s. “No, that wouldn’t end well for either of us. It might even get me blackballed. Besides, Lisa Larson is the real problem. If only there was some way to get rid of her. She’s coming by the theater later tonight. She wants to talk to me about the role.” Annabelle dropped her head in her hands and began to sob harder.
Jimmy couldn’t bear to see her cry. Something had to be done. Hadn’t he taken a solemn vow not to let anyone hurt her? “How about if I put a little scare into her? I bet then she wouldn’t want to stay and you’d get to keep your job.”
Annabelle raised her head and smiled wanly. “Would you really do that for me?”
He gently wiped away her tears. “You’re my girl, aren’t you?”
She pressed herself against him until he could feel every muscle inside her move. “You know that I am, Jimmy.”
“Then stop your crying. I’ll take care of this for you.”
Annabelle plucked a tissue from its box and blew her nose. “How? What are you going to do?”
“You leave that part to me. Just make sure you bring her out the back door of the theater tonight. Say you want to take her for a drink or something. It’ll be dark. I’ll wear a mask and rough her up a little bit. Just enough to put the fear of death in her.”
“And what about me? What do I do?”
“You don’t do anything except maybe pretend to be afraid and run away. Just don’t attract attention or scream.”
* * *
Annabelle spent the rest of the day preparing for her role that night. She wanted to be ready when her rival arrived and the proverbial curtain went up. She was seething by the time the actress swept into the dressing room.
Lisa Larson’s toned body and tight skin were part and parcel of her successful career and only helped fuel Annabelle’s rage. The woman could afford to hire a personal trainer and plastic surgeon with all the money she made. Even so, the wrinkles around her neck were like the rings on a tree. They gave away her age. The bitch had to be at least fifty years old.
“Oh, poor Annabelle. I feel so bad for you. But you know how Billy can be when it comes to this sort of thing. He prefers to work with actors who he already knows.”
Annabelle wasn’t fooled by Lisa Larson’s sad face. She saw the scorn flickering beneath her mask of concern and, for once, she remembered her lines perfectly.
“Don’t worry, Lisa. There are no hard feelings. I know it isn’t your fault. That’s why I came here tonight. Can we go discuss it over drinks?”
Lisa Larson breathed an audible sigh of relief. “That’s a wonderful idea. Maybe I can get them to hire you as my understudy. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.”
She cast a questioning glance as Annabelle slipped on a man’s jacket and a pair of large gloves. A rubber band around each wrist held them in place. “I’m not used to this weather and my fingers get cold,” she explained.
She had rehearsed the next step at least a dozen times in her mind. Everything would be fine as long as Jimmy was on time and didn’t miss his cue. Annabelle made sure no one was around as she led Lisa Larson through the bowels of the theater and out the rear door.
“Why don’t we go back inside and use the front entrance?” Lisa said nervously when a man in a ski mask appeared.
Annabelle didn’t respond but pulled a blackjack from her pocket and mustered all her strength. The club slammed into Lisa Larson’s skull with a resounding thud. Had it been a baseball, she would have hit a home run. Lisa Larson’s legs folded beneath her and she fell to the ground like an unstrung marionette.
Jimmy stared in disbelief as the woman’s head bounced twice on the pavement. “What in the hell did you do that for?” A puddle of fluid formed at his feet.
“I was afraid she was going to scream.”
Jimmy kneeled beside the body and felt for a pulse. “Jesus Christ! You bashed in her skull. She’s dead!”
“I was only thinking of you, Jimmy. I didn’t want you to get caught.”
She dropped the weapon into a plastic bag as Jimmy head
ed over to his car to collect an old tarp. Carefully wrapping Lisa Larson in it, he placed her body inside the trunk.
“What do we do now?” Annabelle asked. She peeled off the gloves and slipped them in with the weapon and shoved the bag in her pocket.
“Quit talking so much and let me think,” he snapped.
Annabelle was shocked at his response. Jimmy was clearly panicked. If he was going to treat her this way, he could fend for himself. She was beginning to think maybe he couldn’t be trusted.
“There’s a processing plant at the end of terminal. The security guard there owes me a favor. Stay here until I get back.”
She watched silently as he drove over to a cyclone fence, opened the gate, and went through.
* * *
Jimmy’s nerves were shot to hell. What in God’s name had just happened? Things weren’t supposed to go down this way. He’d talked about scaring the woman, not committing murder. The bitter taste of acid filled his mouth and his stomach was starting to burn. Damn it! He’d kill for a swig of Mylanta right about now.
He parked near the back of the plant and killed the headlights.
“Hey, pops,” he said, poking the security guard who sat fast asleep on the job.
The old man woke with a start and began pecking at the night like a hungry chicken. “Who is it? I don’t have any money. What do you want?”
Jimmy glanced around cautiously. “You know that favor you owe me? Well, it’s time. I’m calling it in. How about you take a cigarette break and I’ll keep watch for a while.”
“Sure thing, Jimmy. Whatever you say.” The old man’s bones creaked as he stood up, stretched, and hobbled off in the dark.
Jimmy took a deep breath and opened the trunk of his car. The remaining heat fled Lisa Larson’s body as he pulled out the tarp and dragged her down the steps of the processing plant.
Jimmy had worked as a butcher before. He’d carved plenty of animals and knew what had to be done. After cutting her up, he threw the body parts into the chopper where a lethal line of sharp blades went to work. From there, the flesh was blended in a large vat and fed through a funnel and came out the other end looking like a meat smoothie.
He swore he’d never eat another hot dog again. But there had been no choice. It had to be done to protect Annabelle. His loins tingled at the thought of how she would repay him later tonight. Annabelle owed him big time. She’d be at his beck and call. Yet when he drove back behind the theater, she wasn’t there. He scoured the area, but she was nowhere in sight.
There had been no time to think about things before. Now that he did, the images that came at him were fast and furious. Annabelle had been wearing the jacket he’d loaned her the other night. His gloves had been shoved in the pockets. As for the blackjack, she must have found it hidden in his desk drawer. Jesus Christ. Had she been setting him up all along?
Jimmy rushed back to his store. Annabelle wasn’t there either. But a note had been slipped under the door. He unfolded the scrap of paper with trembling fingers.
Sorry, Jimmy. It was fun while it lasted. But all good things must come to an end. Think of me whenever you go to the food trucks. It’s time that I begin my second act.
The Gauntlet
by Jonathan Stone
Edgewood Avenue
In my junior year of college, I lived off campus with several roommates—Larry from Rye, New York, Roger from Brentwood, California, Bruce from Chagrin Falls, Ohio, and Lionel from Lincoln, Nebraska. We rented the basement apartment and the open-plan, skylighted second floor of a blue clapboard house whose first-floor apartment was occupied by Keneisha—a sometime prostitute and drug dealer—and her six-year-old son Marcus. (We bought dime bags from her—probably the only genuine convenience of off-campus living, as it turned out.) Keneisha wore a gold necklace with a gold phallus pendant, which nestled in permanent thrall deep in her cleavage. I got the sense that Keneisha at some point had put out the word to leave the Yale boys alone, but her word apparently went only so far. Because while we were never burglarized or attacked inside the house, on the walk from the house to campus we were, it seemed, fair game. Hell, we were more than fair game. We were sport.
This was Edgewood Avenue. Edgewood—accent on the second syllable for the proper local pronunciation. We’d say it like that in jest to each other—out of the locals’ earshot, of course. My Smith girlfriend was in France for the semester. So this was my semester abroad. My own cross-cultural experience.
Edgewood. Six blocks of anarchy in the shadow of Yale. At that time, New Haven, 1976, a lot of the blocks around Yale were seas of, and lessons in, anarchy. Say “New Haven, 1976” to Old Blues of a certain vintage and we shake our heads in mournful recognition. Just the name of the city coupled to the year calls up tensions, hostility, urban America at its worst.
Our Edgewood education started even before the semester officially began. The windshield of my Volvo was smashed on our first night in the house, when I left the car out after moving my stuff in.
Oh, you have to garage it.
Our shiny bikes—stolen from right off the front porch.
Oh, you have to bring them inside with you.
Our dreams of a little freedom from the constraints of Yale. A little liberation for five boys who had followed all the rules all their lives to get here. Looking for a little independence, a little adventure, a modest little divergence from the constrictions of academia and convention and expectation.
Oh, freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.
* * *
As fate would have it, for the galloping hormones of a nineteen-year-old Yalie, my basement bedroom was contiguous to where Keneisha “partied” with her gentleman callers, and the thumping of music—KC and the Sunshine Band, “That’s the Way (I Like It)”; Ohio Players, “Love Rollercoaster”; Vicki Sue Robinson, “Turn the Beat Around”; Donna Summer, “Love to Love You Baby”—drowned out whatever other audible accompaniment there might be, though the music did not purge it from my imagination.
My bedroom had a sliding door onto a small junk-cluttered backyard. Metal bars held the slider closed, but I would hear the door jiggle occasionally while I was working at my desk. That’s when I would grab the five iron I slept with under my bed.
A five iron. The comfort of its familiar shaft in my hand. That should tell you a lot about Yalies on Edgewood: a five iron for protection.
* * *
I did not stroll down Edgewood with a five iron, though. I walked only in daylight. One walk to campus in the morning, one walk back before dark. There was no consistent theme or look to those six blocks—a tiny Ukrainian bakery, a locksmith, a few empty storefronts, some residential “projects” whose crazy pink, purple, and tangerine pastel doors were comically bright spots—some developer’s idea for a little accent of cheerfulness—that only highlighted the slapdash, thoughtless, halfhearted attempt to dress up the drab brown brick around them. And even those doors were quickly faded and besieged by graffiti.
In New Haven in 1976, it was essentially running a gauntlet, walking those six blocks. Day was risky. Night was lawless.
I walked focused, intent, staying alert, watching around me every step, probably not a good target. If I was going to a party on campus, I’d stay in a friend’s room. I lived my life around timing the Edgewood walk right.
Lionel Patton did not. Lionel ambled, strolled, looked around casually, curiously, taking it all in.
Lionel, from Lincoln, Nebraska. Big-boned, loose-limbed, ambling down the sidewalk oblivious—a creamy-skinned, bright-eyed, howdy-there-how-ya-doin’ friendly Midwesterner. Black-framed glasses on an open face. Big, outgoing, cheerful. Carrying his French horn everywhere. It was practically attached to him, and he was here because of it. Recruited by all the Ivies for his French horn prowess.
The world had always been his oyster, you could tell. His family were rich corn and soybean farmers. Farmers with thousands of acres. The kind of farmers who took frequent trip
s to Europe and the Far East. Life an ongoing project in growth and learning.
He was the kind of Yalie who comes east to school and maybe finds a pretty wife (prime breeding stock), and after graduation heads to Europe for more cultural education, maybe finds a European wife instead, returns to the Midwest eventually to take over the family holdings and tend them for the next generation. Lionel let drop once that his family had loaned some money to a bright young fellow, name of Warren Buffett, and had gotten some stock shares in return. In short, the kind of Yalie you can’t make up. And I’m sure that when he told his folks, I’m going to live off campus, Ma and Pa, they had a certain bon-vivant vision of it that did not match the reality of New Haven, 1976.
Lionel was, in short, a target.
Might as well have painted a bull’s-eye on his French horn case.
Although they never took the French horn. They didn’t want a French horn. They didn’t even know what a French horn was. They wanted his wallet. They wanted his new sneakers. They wanted his suede jacket.
It was a certain group of kids. I’d seen them, and managed to avoid them. They swarmed out of nowhere on their bikes, in their hooded sweatshirts, yelling and laughing and posturing for each other, intimidating girls and the elderly, and then disappearing into the housing projects or alleys just as quickly. Street guerrillas. A gang in its formative stage. A project for some enterprising Yale anthropology major with a suicide wish.
Lionel, unlike the rest of us, insisted on reporting it every time. That was the proper thing to do. So the weary cops would come out, hold their pads in front of them, and dutifully take down the information, looking at Lionel like he was from another planet, which he clearly was.
Beyond the insult of being intimidated by skinny, arrogant, undernourished fifteen-year-olds, privileged Yalies could of course absorb the forfeiture of a few material goods. Part of me thinks those little Edgewood hoodlums knew that, and it peeved them to see Lionel with new sneakers and a nice new jacket a few days later, and that’s why they upped their game.