Optical Delusion

by Hunter Shea

  “Like is a very strong word.”

  “You can keep them. They stink, but they do make you look like a policeman.”

  Blackstone grinned, pointing his finger at his son like a gun. “Freeze. You’re under arrest. So, you thought you’d get away, didn’t you?”

  Brian held his hands up high, laughing. “I confess. I stole all the Swedish Fish at the corner store.”

  “I always knew I’d nab you, Swedish Fish bandit.”

  When he spied his alarm clock, he saw it was almost time for Mork & Mindy. A little mindless entertainment was exactly what he needed tonight, although Brian had done a good job taking the edge off.

  “How about instead of jail, you get me a beer and some potato chips?”

  “Okay.”

  Brian ambled downstairs. The one job he liked to do was getting his mother and father their drinks and snacks before TV time.

  Blackstone plopped into his lounger, the beer and chips already on the table. He lit up a Marlboro and turned on the TV with the wired remote control.

  “You wearing those things again?” Andrea asked.

  “What?”

  She pointed at his eyes.

  “Christ, I forgot I had them on.” The weird sensation must have worn off while he was goofing with Brian.

  “How can you even see with them on?”

  He stared at her standing by the grandfather clock. Everything looked a lot darker last night when he’d first tried them on. It wasn’t so bad now.

  “Cool guys don’t need to see,” he quipped, flipping to channel seven.

  “Or crazy people.”

  When she moved to take her seat, Blackstone choked on his beer.

  For just a split second, he was able to see her bra underneath her wool turtleneck!

  And just like that, it was gone.

  “You all right?” she said, patting his back.

  Recovering, he said, “Just went down the wrong pipe.”

  He looked back at her, staring at her chest, though she couldn’t tell behind the dark glasses. All he saw now was a sea of itchy wool.

  “Are you going to watch TV with those things on?” she asked.

  “Um, no, of course not.” He took the glasses off, folded them and put them by the ashtray.

  Mork & Mindy came on, but all he could think about was that brief, crystal-clear glimpse of Andrea’s bra.

  Chapter Three

  Fridays meant a quick stop at the Rusty Nail Saloon for a couple of cold ones with Jack Fortman and Joe “Holes” Metrano.

  Holes didn’t work at the factory. He, in his own estimation, was a professional gambler, betting on the ponies at the OTB. Most people knew him as “Holes in Head” on account of the dumb bets he made. The only reason he wasn’t living in a cardboard box was because he still hung his clothes in the bedroom he’d grown up in. His mother made sure to take very good care of him.

  “First round’s on me,” Holes said when he and Fortman grabbed a couple of stools at the bar.

  “You must have hit,” Blackstone said, holding up two fingers to the bartender. He still couldn’t remember the guy’s name—he’d only started a month ago—but the kid already knew which beer they preferred. Nothing beat an ice-cold Schlitz on tap.

  “Got the exacta in the fifth at Aqueduct, then I hit a box triple in the seventh at Yonkers. I’m loaded, fellas.”

  Fortman snorted, guzzling half his beer down. “The payout couldn’t have been that much. Unless you played one of your insane long shots.”

  Holes didn’t let Fortman rain on his parade. “If that’s the case, you can get the next round, working stiff.”

  They settled into their usual banter, bitching about the Giants, that pantywaist Carter, and the shit storm brewing at the factory. The Rusty Nail started to fill up, the happy-hour crowd pouring in for cheap drinks and pickled eggs.

  After a couple of beers, Fortman announced with a burp that he had to take a piss.

  “I think I’ll join you,” Holes said.

  “What are you, some kinda woman? Guys don’t go to the bathroom together,” Fortman protested.

  “They do when they both have to take a leak. Marty, order another round and tell him to put it on my tab. You’re nice, so you get a free ride tonight.”

  Blackstone laughed, wagging a finger at Fortman. “See, being mean doesn’t pay.”

  Fortman flipped him the bird and angled through the crowd, Holes on his heels.

  Reaching into his pocket, Blackstone retrieved the plastic X-ray specs. He brought them hoping for a moment like this. What better way to truly test them than at a bar full of good-looking chicks? It was one thing to sneak a peek at Andrea’s bra. He’d seen that and everything underneath more times than he could count.

  Now, if they really worked, and he wasn’t losing his mind, this was going to be his finest hour at the Rusty Nail. He just had to do it fast before the guys returned and wondered why the hell he was wearing sunglasses inside.

  He slipped them on, blinked hard twice and sucked in a deep breath as his eyeballs wobbled in their sockets. It was so disturbing, he almost ripped them right off.

  Then a pretty redhead—who couldn’t have been older than twenty-four—sauntered by. She didn’t even notice him, but he couldn’t help but see the black panties she wore under her skirt.

  His heart jumped.

  His eyes stayed glued to her panties until she disappeared into the crowd.

  Holy shit, it really works!

  Scanning the crowd, he spotted a smiling brunette with long, feathered hair. She was sipping what looked to be a Manhattan, standing by one of the small round tables along the side of the tavern. His eyes traveled down from her smile to the frilly bra under her black shirt. He’d look down even lower, but his view was blocked by the table and a guy sitting opposite her. A quick attempt to see her panties resulted in a clear view of the guy’s tighty-whities.

  Blackstone slammed his eyes shut, turning away.

  It was just as well, as he spotted Holes walking back. He quickly took off the glasses and jammed them in his pocket.

  “You lose Jack?”

  “That guy pisses like a broken faucet. He may be there until last call.”

  Fortman eventually returned and they had one last beer, knowing they were going to see each other again tomorrow at poker.

  It was dark out when Blackstone got to his car. He put on the glasses.

  Damn, too dark to see. He couldn’t drive with them on.

  It would have been nice to see what he could glimpse walking the streets, though. Plenty of people were out, ambling from bar to bar.

  There was always tomorrow.

  “How the hell are these things working?” he said over and over on the drive home. He’d have to consult the pile of back issues of Popular Mechanics this weekend. Maybe there was something in there that touched on some breakthrough development in X-ray technology that he’d somehow glossed over.

  * * *

  “You have a nice time?” Andrea said.

  “Just peachy,” he replied, putting his coat in the closet.

  “Pizza’s in the oven. I’ll get you a slice. You want meatball or sausage and onions?”

  “One of each.”

  He settled into his chair. Friday nights were a whole different ritual. Pizza night meant Andrea and Brian ate early, not waiting for him to return from the Rusty Nail on account of some Fridays, he didn’t get home until it was technically Saturday.

  As Andrea walked into the kitchen, he put on the X-ray specs. Hmmm, she was wearing her special panties with the lace edges. He knew what that meant. Blackstone felt his skin flush with anticipation. It was kinda nice knowing what was to come.

  The glasses were tucked between his leg and the chair’s cushion before she returned with his pizza.

  “Just let me know if you want another slice,” she said, her fingers brushing the hair behind his ear.

  Drinks with the boys, ogling strange women’s under
wear, pizza and now a little Friday-night boogie in the bedroom.

  What had he done to deserve this?

  And what was Noel seeing with his glasses? Blackstone made it a point to make sure the kid never wore them while he was in the house. He didn’t need that twerp salivating over Andrea.

  Chapter Four

  Saturdays were always a rough start.

  The only good thing about waking up with a hangover was knowing the day could only get better as it moved along.

  Blackstone was having a tough time seeing the bright side of things at the moment. He woke up to a jackhammer in his skull, mouth dry as confetti, stomach feeling like it had up and died. That damn woodpecker was banging away on the dead tree in the yard again, each strike of its beak a spike in Blackstone’s skull.

  “Drop dead already,” he murmured into his pillow.

  Reaching a hand out, he felt Andrea’s side of the bed empty. He dared to open one eye and saw it was past eleven. He had to take a piss but was having a hard time willing his body up and out of the bed. Eventually, the desire not to wet the sheets like a baby trumped the need to burrow under them and not move a muscle for a few more hours.

  After a quick pit stop, he shuffled downstairs to the smell of bacon. Brian sat in front of the TV, watching cartoons: Road Runner, to be specific. Blackstone got a kick out of Road Runner. Normally, he’d sit and watch it with Brian, but not today. Not when he was feeling like a dog that had been run over flat by a semi.

  “Shouldn’t you be sweeping?” he grumbled.

  Sweeping around the outside of the house was Brian’s solitary chore on Saturday mornings. It was now almost noon and the kid was still zoning out in front of the TV.

  His son looked at him with barely concealed horror. Blackstone had seen his reflection in the bathroom mirror and couldn’t blame him.

  “I was going to do it after Looney Tunes.”

  Blackstone twisted the knob on the TV, shutting it off just as Road Runner was about to light a bomb under Wile E. Coyote’s ass.

  “Show’s over. Sweep and go find your friends. Come home when your mother calls you for dinner.”

  Brian gave an exaggerated sigh, stomping past him.

  “And no bringing anyone over here to play,” Blackstone added.

  He jumped at the touch on his shoulder.

  “Someone’s chipper today.”

  Andrea carried a loaded laundry basket. Her hair was tied up under a bandanna.

  “Is there coffee?” he asked.

  “As my husband would say: ‘Does the pope shit in the woods?’ There’s leftover bacon on the table too.”

  He mumbled something that might have been a thank-you. Even he wasn’t sure.

  “Good thing we had our fun before you finished all that beer,” she said.

  It sure had been fun. Blackstone, knowing she had her sex panties on ahead of time, had been ready and waiting. By the time Brian fell asleep and Andrea moved to sit on his lap, he was ravenous.

  He squeezed her butt cheek before shuffling to the kitchen.

  “Maybe we can try again tonight.”

  She ruffled his hair. He thought his skull might shatter into bits. “We’ll see. Right now, I don’t think you could handle it.”

  As she went up the stairs to put away the clothes, Brian passed her, running outside and avoiding eye contact with his father. He slammed the door behind him. Blackstone heard the garage door open, then the sweet sound of Brian sweeping the front steps.

  He’d always hated sweeping himself, which was why he delegated that chore to his son a year ago in exchange for his allowance. That allowance afforded Brian a slice of pizza at Willie’s Pizzeria and an afternoon of pinball. He thought it was a pretty fair exchange.

  Grabbing a cup of coffee and loading bacon on a buttered roll, he opened one of the living-room windows a crack and sank into his lounger, letting the cool air wake him. He felt something jab his leg, saw it was the X-ray specs.

  He almost put them on, but wasn’t sure his hangover headache could handle the X-ray specs eye yank. He waited until he ate his breakfast, had another cup of coffee and a glass of water to wash down two aspirin. Andrea was upstairs, singing “Maria” from West Side Story, cleaning the bathroom.

  Standing at the kitchen sink, he looked out into their small, perfectly square yard. His neighbor, Frannie, was outside watching her poodle run around. Frannie was a recent divorcée who’d moved into the downstairs apartment in the house behind them a year ago. She was pushing forty but looked thirty, with long auburn hair and a cigarette perpetually between her full lips.

  Blackstone went back to the lounger and grabbed the glasses.

  “Well, hello there.”

  It looked like Frannie had decided not to wear a bra today. Her small breasts were still pert despite the years, nipples puckered from the cold.

  He looked over the glasses, and saw she was wearing a thin coat over her sweater. Smoke hung over her like a cloud. Then he looked through the glasses to stare at her tits until she turned around and took her poodle inside.

  “Now that’s a sure hangover cure.”

  Taking the glasses off, he winced as the arms pressed on the sides of his head. His face must have been swollen from all the drinking. Massaging the bridge of his nose, he went to the basement bathroom to take a hot shower. He needed to fix one of the kitchen cabinets today and he had to bounce back so he could play poker later tonight.

  And maybe he’d take a stroll around the block with his X-ray specs, just to do some further scientific testing.

  * * *

  “I’m heading to the corner store to get a pack of cigarettes. You need anything?”

  “We could use some butter and a can of tomato soup,” Andrea said. She’d finally taken a break, sitting at the kitchen table flipping through a magazine, piping-hot coffee close at hand.

  “Butter. Soup. Got it.” Blackstone put on his winter coat, making sure the glasses were in his pocket.

  “Good work on the cabinet,” Andrea said before he walked out the door. “I knew I kept you around for something.”

  “You keep doing what you did last night and I’ll stay around.”

  He heard her snicker as he closed the door, a gust of cold air blasting him in the face. The weatherman said it would snow on Monday. Asshole was usually wrong. Felt more like snow on Sunday to Blackstone.

  Walking up the street to the corner store, he put the X-ray specs on. The bright day got a little duller, but not as dark as the glasses made things just the day before. He really didn’t need more cigarettes. He still had half a carton in the basement. But he needed an excuse to walk around.

  Because of the cold, the block was quiet. No matter. This wasn’t about seeing more boobs and underthings, though that would have been a bonus. He knew that already worked.

  No, now it was on to even bigger things.

  He paused outside Mr. Otello’s house, a two-family brick behemoth the old man kept meticulously. Blackstone stared hard at the first floor of the house. After ten seconds, all he could see was brick. He tried the door. The wood grew fuzzy for a moment, but he couldn’t see past it.

  So much for that, Blackstone thought.

  A few houses away, he stopped beside a metal mailbox secured to the fence outside Mrs. O’Hanlon’s yard. This time, he was able to peer through the thin aluminum and see the stack of mail and folded magazines inside.

  “Maybe the material can’t be too thick.”

  He spotted some cardboard in Mrs. O’Hanlon’s garbage. Walking past the fence, he plucked the cardboard out and placed it in front of the statue of the Virgin Mary she’d put next to her birdbath. It only took a few second to laser right through the cardboard. He could easily see the crack in Mary’s face from the time Steve Liebert walloped it with an errant football.

  Hoping Mrs. O’Hanlon hadn’t seen him rooting through her garbage and messing with her holy statue, he dashed out of the yard.

  “Hey Martin. Can yo
u do me a favor?”

  Willie Riley startled him.

  Somehow, the neighborhood’s octogenarian had managed to sneak up on him like an Indian tracker.

  “Oh, hi Willie. What was that?”

  “You heading to the corner store?”

  Blackstone made the mistake of looking at the man, dressed in tan slacks that had seen better days and an old peacoat that had more holes than a wedge of Swiss cheese. In a flash, he saw right down to the man’s stained underwear, the yellow ring around his flaccid penis revolting enough to make Blackstone stagger.

  “You all right?” Willie said.

  Blackstone whipped the glasses off.

  “Yeah. Nursing a hangover.”

  That brought a smile to Willie’s face. “I wish I could drink enough to get a hangover. It’s too cold for me to walk up there, but I really need milk, salami, and a loaf of bread. You think you could get it for me? Here’s five dollars. You can even keep the change.”

  Blackstone shivered, not from the cold, but from the horror of what he’d just accidentally seen. The last thing he wanted was to be everyone’s errand boy, but you didn’t say no to Willie when he asked for a little help.

  “Sure, Willie, sure. Except you’re getting your change. Boss said I’m not allowed to take tips.”

  Willie laughed, slapping his back. “Thanks a lot, Martin. You’re a good kid.”

  No more testing for now, Blackstone thought, hands in his pockets as he rushed to the corner store. These glasses giveth, and they certainly taketh away.

  Chapter Five

  “What’ll it be, fellas? A little five-card stud or seven-card draw?” Fortman shuffled the cards, an unlit cigar crammed in the corner of his mouth. Blackstone, Holes, Harry Rondo and Benny Hartman from the factory sat around the kitchen table. Cold cans of Schaefer sat next to each fresh pile of chips, cigarette smoke filling the room.

  “I’m feeling five-card stud,” Holes said.

  “Seven-card draw it is,” Fortman said, the guys laughing. It was always best to go with the opposite of whatever Holes said.

  “Who the heck do you think you are, Greta Garbo?” Rondo said, gesturing at Blackstone’s glasses.

  Blackstone had already crafted the perfect lie on the ride over.