Flood arrived five minutes later. He was in high good humor and at his sardonic best. “What a wonderful little town this is,” he said ebulliently after he had bounded up the stairs and come over to where Raphael sat in the sun beside the railing. “Do you realize that you managed to find perhaps the one place in the whole country that’s an absolute intellectual vacuum?”
“What’s got you so wound up?” Raphael asked, amused in spite of himself. When Flood was in good spirits, he was virtually overpowering, and Raphael needed that at the moment.
“I’ve been out examining this pigsty,” Flood told him. “Were you aware that the engineering marvel of the entire city—the thing they’re proudest of-—is the sewage-treatment plant?”
Raphael laughed. “No, I didn’t know that.”
“Absolutely. They all invite you to go out and have a look at it. They all talk about it. It’s terribly important to them. I suppose it’s only natural, though.”
“Oh? Why’s that?”
“Old people, Raphael, old, old, old, old people. Spokane has more hospitals and doctors per square inch than cities five times its size because it’s full of old people, and old people get sick a lot. Spokane is positively overwhelmed by its sewage-treatment plant because old people are obsessed with the functioning of their bowels. They gloat over their latest defecation the way young people gloat over their most recent sexual conquest. This place is the prune-juice and toilet-paper capital of America. It’s got more old people than any place this side of Miami Beach. And the whole town has a sort of geriatric artsy-craftsy air about it. They do macramé and ceramics and little plaster figurines they pop out of ready-made rubber molds so they can call themselves sculptors. They crank out menopausal religious verse by the ream and print it up in self-congratulatory little mimeographed booklets and then sit around smugly convinced that they’re poets.” “Come on.” Raphael laughed.
“And the biggest thing on their educational TV station is the annual fund-raising drive. There’s an enormous perverted logic there. They hustle money to keep the station on the air so that it can broadcast pictures of them hustling money to keep the station on the air. It’s sort of self-perpetuating.”
“There are some colleges here,” Raphael objected. “The place isn’t a total void.”
Flood snorted with laughter. “Sure, baby. I’ve looked into them—a couple of junior colleges where the big majors are sheet metal, auto mechanics, and bedpan repair, and a big Catholic university where they pee their pants over basketball and theology. I love Catholic towns, don’t you? Wall-to-wall mongoloids. That’s what comes of having a celibate priesthood making sure that their parishioners are punished for enjoying sex. A good Catholic woman can have six mongoloids in a row before it begins to dawn on her that something might be wrong with her reproductive system.”
“You’re positively dazzling today, Damon. You must be in a good humor.”
“I am, babes, I am. I’m always delighted to discover elementáis—things that seem to be a distillation of an ideal. I think I’m a Platonist—I like to contemplate concepts in their pure state, and Spokane is the perfect place to contemplate such concepts as mongolism, senility, perversion, and bad breath in all their naked, blinding glory.”
“Bad breath?”
“It must be something in the water. Everybody in town has breath that could peel paint at forty yards. I could stand that, though, if they weren’t all about three quarters ‘round the bend.”
“It’s not quite that bad.”
“Really? The biggest growth industry in the area is the loony bin out at Medical Lake. The whole town is crawling with maniacs.
I saw a man on the sidewalk giving a speech to a fifty-seven Chevy this morning.”
“Tall?” Raphael asked, “Skinny? Bald and with a big, booming voice?”
“You’ve seen him?”
“He was in front of the bus station when I first got into town. Is he still talking about the nonexistence of chance?”
“No. The old bastard was lecturing on Hegel as close as I could tell—thesis, antithesis, synthesis, all that shit.”
“Did it make any sense?”
“Not to me it didn’t, but that doesn’t mean anything. Even the original didn’t make sense to me.”
“It’s nice to know that he’s still around.” Raphael smiled. “It gives the place a sort of continuity.”
Flood looked at him, one eyebrow raised. “That’s the sort of continuity you like? You sure you don’t want me to reserve you one of those rubber rooms out at Medical Lake?”
“Not just yet. What else have you been up to? I haven’t seen much of you in the last few days.”
Flood leaned out over the railing, looking down into the streets.
“Careful,” Raphael warned.
“It’s solid enough,” Flood said negligently. “I’ve been playing your game, Angel.”
“What game is that?”
“Watching people—examining loserhood in all its elemental purity. You picked the wrong place, Raphael. Come on down to Peaceful Valley. That’s the natural and native habitat of the archetypal loser. Did you know that people throw things off the Maple Street Bridge down onto the roofs of the houses down there? It’s the only place in the world where it rains beer cans. A couple years back a drunken old woman got her head caved in when somebody chucked a potted plant over the side up there. Can you imagine being geraniumed into eternity? Now that’s a real, honest-to-God loser for you.”
“You’re not serious.”
“May the great and eternal flyswatter of God squash me flat right here if I’m not. Who’s that?” He pointed down at the street. Raphael glanced over the rail. “That’s Patch.” “Another one of your losers?”
“No, I don’t think so. He doesn’t look like a loser, and he doesn’t act like one. I haven’t figured him out yet.”
“Gloomy-looking bastard, isn’t he? He’s got a face that could curdle milk.” Flood walked away from the railing as if the sight of Patch were some kind of personal affront. “Anyway,” he went on quickly as if trying to recapture his mood, “I’ve started collecting losers, too. We got a whole ‘nother class down in Peaceful Valley. Take Bob the Buggerer, for example. He’s been busted four or five times for molesting little boys. One more time and he goes off to the slammer for the rest of his natural life plus about seventy-five years. Every time a kid goes by on a bicycle, he gets that same desperately longing look on his face you see on the old geeks downtown when a wine truck passes. It’s just a matter of time until it’ll get to be too much for him. And then there’s Paul the Pusher. He’s got stashes of dope all over the valley down there. The cops shake him down every time they go through—just to keep in practice—so he’s afraid to keep the stuff in his house. He buries it in tin cans under logs and behind trees up on the hillside. He’s worried that somebody’s going to find it, so he’s always digging it up to make sure it’s still there. Every night you can see him scurrying out of his house with a shovel and a panic-stricken look on his face. Freddie the Flasher creeps around exposing himself to little girls. Polly the Punchboard is a raging nymphomaniac. She frequents some of the raunchier taverns and brings home horny drunks by the busload.”
Flood’s tone was harsh, contemptuous, and his descriptions were a kind of savage parody of Raphael’s earlier observations. It was almost as if the silent passage of Patch had somehow set him off, somehow made him so angry that he went beyond the bounds of what he might normally have said. Raphael watched him and listened closely, trying to detect the note of personal ridicule he knew must be there, but Flood was too smooth, too glib, even in his anger, and the flow of his description moved too fast to be able to pin him down.
It had been private before, a kind of passive observing that hadn’t harmed anyone, but he had made the mistake of telling Flood. He should have known that the dark young man with the obsidian eyes would twist it, pervert it for his own amusement. Raphael began to wish that he had
kept his mouth shut.
iv
Raphael had been swimming, and he had spent an hour in the weight room at the YMCA. The car made getting around much easier, but it had definitely disrupted his exercise routine. Since Flood had arrived in Spokane, Raphael’s life had suddenly become so full that he no longer had time for everything. All in all, though, he preferred it that way. He thought back to those long, empty hours he had spent when he had first arrived in Spokane, and shuddered.
Frankie was waiting for him again when he got home. She stood on the sidewalk wearing a sleeveless blouse. It had been warm for the past week, and Frankie had started to work on her tan. Her arms and shoulders were golden. Her eyes, however, were flashing, and her lips were no longer tremulous. Her raven’s-wing eyebrows were drawn down, and she looked very much like a small volcano about to erupt.
Raphael crossed the sidewalk. “Hi, babe.” He leered at her. “You wanna go upstairs and fool around?” He had begun to use innuendo and off-color remarks to keep her off balance.
Frankie, however, was not off balance this time. “ ‘Sfacim!” she almost spat at him.
He bunked. He had a sort of an idea what the word meant, and it was not the sort of word he expected from Frankie. Then she said a few other things as well.
“I didn’t know you spoke Italian,” he said mildly.
“Bastard!”
“Frankie!”
“Get up those goddamn stairs!” She pointed dramatically. This was not the Frankie he knew.
He went around to the side of the building and started up the stairs. He could hear her coming up behind him, bubbling curses like a small, angry teapot.
“What’s got you so wound up?” he asked her when they reached the roof.
“You got me in trouble, you son of a bitch!”
“Come on, Frankie, calm down. We’re not going to get anywhere if all you’re going to do is swear at me.” He went over and sat down in his chair.
“Why didn’t you tell me that you’d gone to work?”
“I didn’t think it was particularly important. It’s not much of a job.”
“You’re supposed to report any kind of a job. You’ve got a hole in your progress chart you could drive a truck through. You didn’t even go to vocational rehab. What were you thinking of?”
“You didn’t tell me the rules. How was I supposed to know?”
“You stupid, inconsiderate bastard!”
“If you feel like swearing, Frankie, you can probably handle it without having me around. ”Cabrone!”
“Spanish, too? You are gifted.”
“We had Spick neighbors when I was a kid.” She drew in a long, shuddering breath and seemed to get control of herself. “We have to fill out reports, Raphael,” she told him, her dark eyes still flashing. “Am I going too fast for you?”
“Be nice.”
She made a somewhat elaborate obscene gesture that involved both hands. “There’s a procedure, Raphael. First we discuss various occupations and decide what sort of job’s compatible with your disability. Then you go to vocational rehab to get the training you need to qualify you for the job. Then we set up the interviews for you. You didn’t do any of that. Now I’m going to have to fake all kinds of reports. My supervisor thinks I’m incompetent.”
“I’m sorry, Frankie. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you were too busy trying to talk dirty to me to see if you could embarrass me.” She laughed derisively. “Fat chance. I’m what’s known as a tough little broad. You couldn’t embarrass me no matter what you said.”
“What was all that puppy-dog stuff about then?”
“You use what you’ve got, Raphael. It makes other people feel superior, and then they go out of their way to help you. It makes my job easier. I thought I had you all tied up with a neat little bow, and then you turn around and stab me in the back. Now we’ve got to fix it.”
“Why don’t you start at the beginning, Frankie?”
“All right. You’ve been assigned a number.”
“Who’s idea was that?” His voice was cold.
“My supervisor’s. She’s queer for numbers. She even assigns numbers to the pencils on her desk. You can be sure it wasn’t me. I know how you feel about us, so I thought I’d handle you sort of informally. Then Goodwill sent in their quarterly report, and guess who’s name was right at the top of the list of new hires. My supervisor got all over my case for not reporting your progress. I told her that I hadn’t had time to fill out all the reports.”
“You lied,” he accused.
“Of course I lied. I had to cover my ass.”
“You’re gonna burn in hell, Frankie.”
“Whatever. How did you learn to repair shoes without any training?”
He shrugged. “Something I picked up.” “It takes weeks.”
“Not if you don’t spend the first twelve sessions having somebody explain to you how a sewing machine works. I ruined a few pair of shoes when I started, but what the hell? They were throwaways to begin with anyway. I’m getting better at it now. Would you like a leather brassiere? I’ll make you one if you’ll model it for me.”
Her hands went to the neck of her blouse. “Do you want to check the size? My left boob’s a little bigger than the right one.”
He almost choked on that. This was definitely not the Frankie he’d known.
“Do you still want to play?” she said. “Or should we get down to business?”
“Sorry, Frankie.”
“Let’s get to work then. I’m going to need to put down dates and names for the progress reports—all the usual dog doo-doo. Nobody’s ever going to read the reports anyway, but we have to have them in your file.”
“You’re a fraud, Frankie.”
“Of course I am, but I’m a very good fraud.” She started asking questions and taking notes. “If anybody ever asks, tell them that I sort of guided you through all this. I’ll put in enough comments about your initiative to keep our asses out of the soup, but you’re going to have to cooperate.”
“It’ll cost you.”
“Anytime, Raphael, but you might just be biting off more than you can chew.” Frankie knew about his condition, of course, but for some reason she chose not to let that knowledge modify her comments. Raphael rather ruefully admitted to himself that he had been the one who had started it, and this new Frankie he had just discovered beneath the disarming, little-girl exterior would not back away from anything.
She sighed. “Why do you have to be so different, Raphael? Why do you insist on not fitting into any of the compartments?” “It’s a gift.”
“It’s a pain in the ass. And why do you have to be so damn good-looking? Those cute remarks you’ve been making came very close to getting you in all kinds of trouble.”
He thought of something he’d been meaning to ask. “Frankie—is that short for Frances?”
“Sort of.” She said it evasively.
“Sort of?”
“All right, smart-ass, it’s Francesca. Francesca Dellamara. Happy now?”
“That’s gorgeous, Frankie. Why don’t you tell people?” “I don’t want them to know I’m a wop.” “You ashamed of bein’ a wop?” “Blow it out your ass.”
When she had finished taking notes, she looked around, her soft lower lip pushed out in a kind of thoughtful pout. Her dark eyes, however, were twinkling mischievously. “This is a very nice roof you’ve got up here,” she said. “A girl could get an all-over tan up here if she wanted one. I could tan places that don’t usually get tanned, and I wouldn’t even get arrested for it.” She looked at him archly. “You could watch, if you’d like,” she offered.
Raphael suddenly blushed. He couldn’t help it.
“Gotcha!” she squealed delightedly.
“You’re a naughty girl, Frankie.”
“Do you want to spank me?” She opened her eyes very wide with a little-girl eagerness.
“Stop that.” Somehow she’d shifted the w
hole thing around, and now he was on the receiving end.
Then Flood arrived. Raphael made the introductions, and Frankie told them that she had to go back to work and left.
“She looks good enough to eat.” Flood smirked.
“Don’t pick on my caseworker,” Raphael told him.
“Your what?”
“My caseworker. I made a mistake when I got here, and now I’m in the toils of the Department of Human Resources. Frankie comes by now and then to make sure that I don’t cheat—sprout a
new leg while they’re not looking or something.”
“You actually let those leeches get their hands on you?” Flood seemed amazed.
“Frankie’s not hard to manage. She’s young and pliable. I’m molding her character—making a closet dissident out of her.” In the light of what he had just discovered, that might not have been entirely true.
“Why in hell did you ever go near those people?”
“I was playing games with them, and the games got out of hand. Social workers are notoriously devoid of any kind of sense of humor—except for Frankie. There might be some hope for that one.”
“Don’t ever bet on that,” Flood said darkly. “Social science was my first major. You knew that, didn’t you?” “You don’t seem the type.”
“You’ve got that right, baby. The smell drove me off.” “The smell?”
“Haven’t you ever noticed? Social workers all smell like rotting flesh—the same way vultures do, and probably for the same reason. Do you know what their ultimate goal is, Raphael?”
“To tend the wounds of the casualties of life—or so they say.”
“Bullshit! Their goal is to take over—to take over everything and everybody—to make us live their way, and to make us pay for it, of course. It’s all money and power, Raphael, the same as everything eke. Once a social worker gets her hooks into you, you never get well, because you’re a renewable resource. Anytime they need more money, they screw around with you until you have to go back into some kind of therapy—at so much an hour. They never let you get free, because someday they might want to squeeze some more money out of you or out of your insurance company. And power? What greater power can you have than to be able to make somebody not only do what you tell him to but think what you tell him to as well?”
The Losers Page 14