When we make love, he wants to leave the lights on, but I will not let him. He almost glows in the dark.
Lying in bed, the light through his window throws my silhouette against the wall, hiding Benny’s completely. He doesn’t try to put his arm around me, thank God. He sits up against his headboard and smokes and talks. He lets the name Frank Priest slip, and anybody who reads the paper knows he’s like the biggest mob boss in town, and another part of Benny becomes clear. Then he asks me what I do. I tell him I run a computer system at a store in the mall. He asks what kind of store and I tell him, jewelry, and he says, oh, really?
Two nights later he takes me to a bar, and anorexic bitches look at me with hateful eyes like maybe I’m holding Benny hostage. Benny gets up at one point to get us refills and some guy with gelled hair and an upturned collar comes by my table, the muscles in his face slack and his eyes shot. He’s trying to talk to me but he’s laughing too hard to do it. At another table behind him his friends are tamping down their giggles like children in church.
The guy never gets his line out. Maybe it was about being a moped, I’ll never know. Benny comes out of the dark and doubles the guy with a punch in the stomach. Then he gets both hands in the crisp bristles of the guy’s hair and slams his head against our table, making my amaretto sour jump. The guy just drops after that. Benny holds his hand out to me, palm up, and says, m’lady. It has little specks of blood on it. I take it in my own and I walk out of that place feeling like I left two hundred pounds sitting on the bar.
That night, after we make love, I tell him I know what it is that he wants. And that it’s okay.
Yeah? he asks me.
Yes, I tell him. Just tell me what your plan is, and let’s work together to make it better.
It turns out that his plan needs a lot of work. Benny doesn’t know much about jewelry stores, or even jewelry. So I tell him about the security room and its own special server, which I can access. I tell him about the loose stone set, and how they keep another box just like it full of cubic zirconium fakes.
He talks about us robbing it together, like Bonnie and Clyde. You could wear a mask, he tells me. And I just look at him. A mask? What kind of mask could I wear?
He wants to blow the safe. He’s already got a bomb, he says. He shows it to me, how you just twist these wires onto those connectors and then push down the little plunger and boom! Never thought I’d learn how to set up a bomb. When I tell him that we won’t need to blow anything up, that the best stuff sits out in the inventory room so people can look through it, he gets a look on his face like I just took away his lollipop. He spent a lot of money on the bomb, he says. Well, it doesn’t go bad, does it? I ask. Just put it in the closet, and maybe we’ll need it next time.
Over the next two weeks I lose ten pounds. I don’t know if it’s all the exercise he’s giving me or if maybe I’m not stuffing my face quite so much, but I haven’t seen the numbers head south in years. In that scale there’s a future where diamond money can buy the gastric bypass, buy new clothes, the kind of clothes they put in the window of the stores at the mall. There’s a future where people could see me and Benny at a bar somewhere and not laugh or gape or guess I’m his sister. And we finally come to make a plan that I’m pretty sure will work. When we finally get it all set out and planned, Benny gets out a bottle of champagne and after a toast he pours some of the champagne on me, and licks it off and I don’t push him away or wonder how I smell. I just look up at the ceiling and see that other life hanging there, so close I can almost taste it.
The morning of the robbery, we leave from Benny’s place, each in our car. Just before we pull out, I get back out and head back inside. Benny gives me a look like, what? I just point to my stomach and roll my eyes and let him paint the picture. It only takes a minute to do what I have to do. Then we’re on course.
None of the salesgirls hanging around the display cases say hello. My card opens the door into the back of the store. I boot up the store server, then buzz the door to the inventory room. Jack, a sweet old guy with a gun on his ankle, lets me in. I boot up the security server, and then wreck it with a few clicks of the mouse. I act confused and ask Jack to check a connection across the room. While he does that, I put a little red sticker on the top of the loose stone case, the one without the fakes in it. Jack comes back and tells me the wires are plugged tight, and I say, well, that probably makes it the motherboard. Let me make a call. I step outside the inventory room and dial Benny’s number. He doesn’t answer, but he’s not supposed to. He’s coming from the food court where we first met. He should be here in the time it takes me to take five deep breaths.
He wears a wig and dark glasses, and he steps into the store with his silver pistol pointing right at Amanda’s face. With his left hand he grabs her by the hair and yanks her across the counter. That’s how skinny she is. And then he’s pushing her to the back of the store and one of the other salesgirls starts screaming. Benny pushes past me without even looking and gets Amanda to open the back door and then just pulls open the inventory door, because I zapped the electric lock when I fried the server.
A few seconds later the gunfire starts.
Maybe Jack went for his gun. I don’t know. But there are two loud pops and Amanda screams and then Benny is back out, kicking Amanda in front of him, the loose stone case in one hand and the pistol in the other. Right in front of me Amanda falls down and Benny points the gun down and there’s a bang and all sorts of stuff slops out of Amanda onto the floor. I would never guess she’d have so much inside her.
Then Benny looks up at me, and even though he’s wearing glasses and a wig I can see him perfectly, and he sees me, like we’re both naked in the daylight.
I turn so I don’t have to watch the gun barrel raise, or Benny’s face when he pulls the trigger. That’s why the bullets hit me in the back.
If it had gone according to the plan that both of us knew was a lie, then Benny would have headed out the door next to the Foot Locker across the way, ditched his wig, glasses, and coat in the hall, and put the loose stone case inside the big plastic Gap bag he had tucked inside his pants. He would have gotten in his car and driven to the motel just past Six Flags on I-44. After the police questioning finished, I was supposed to drive there myself.
But first, I would have stopped at his apartment and unhooked Benny’s bomb from the front door. I would have put the bomb back into the closet and gotten ready for my new life. But I guess Benny will just have to find it himself. See, Benny never really had me fooled. But he did make me hope.
Damn him for that.
Viddi and the Bucharest Brawler
Jónas Knútsson
For a few blessed hours in the early afternoon, The Palooka Bar is transmogrified into a country club of sorts, a veritable Agora of Socratic discourse where elevated exchange of ideas and sentiments becomes possible before the drudges and working stiffs pour in. By the round table, Viddi, The Cadaver, Rhino, and Hulk the bouncer nursed their Buds, all smiles but each sporting a shiner.
Into The Palooka Bar breezed Mercy Beaucoup, bringing with him spurts of the autumn sun. “What’s with Petey the pit bull family reunion?”
“We were gonna roll this guy…” jubilated Rhino.
“Just wanted to borrow a few rubles and he wasn’t too forthcoming,” Viddi hastened to add.
The remembrance brought forth a gentle smile across Hulk’s broad face. “We ran out of beer money.”
“He beat us to a pulp,” Rhino chimed in.
“That should make you happy,” Mercy Beaucoup acknowledged.
“Scuzzy’s our one-way ticket to the land of plenty,” Hulk announced with pride.
“First he lays some rubes on the canvas,” extrapolated Rhino in a reverie. “Then he lays the golden eggs, and then Scuzzy lays some bread on us and we lie back and live the good life.”
“But, Viddi, you’re not allowed within a mile of a boxing ring after—”
“Bah, Burgess Meredi
th can train him for all I care,” retorted Viddi. “Kid’s got the stuff. All I’m going to do is sit back, watch the show, and count the cash.”
“To Dimitri Sciatscu of Bucharest,” toasted The Cadaver.
Rhino raised his beer mug high. “Our gravy train just come in, straight from Bulgaria.”
The first sparring session took place after-hours in the deserted Crooked Nose Gym—Mercy Beaucoup having slipped Stinky the janitor a couple of greenbacks, as the only resolution every boxing association in the land, including the GID, KDJ, KDH, UID, KDD, KKK, YDU, GWU and IOU, had ever agreed upon was to bar Viddi from all matches and venues in perpetuity.
“No way am I getting into the ring with that shrimpster,” whined Beardy. “I’ll be busted for child molestation.” In the opposite corner, Scuzzy’s pot belly jutted out as he lounged on his stool, his physique offering a scant testament to a predilection for sports, or solid food for that matter.
“It’s somebody or nobody, and nobody’s out of town,” countered Viddi.
“Here, you take the gloves.” Beardy brandished Hulk’s Popeye boxing gloves at Viddi.
“I slip in there and you lot will be left to the Indians,” Viddi warned with a passion. “Think of the green across the Glean.”
“What’s a Glean?” wondered Rhino.
“Ready, Scuzzy?”
“Ready-steady. Rocking to go. When I get money?”
The longest time took to disentangle Beardy from the ropes and explain to him where and who he was. After Rhino had taken Hulk to the Hoboken Methodist Hospital and The Cadaver discovered he had a limp, Mercy Beaucoup was left with no choice but enter the ring in his mustard Calani pants and shiny Hungarian shoes.
Although Mercy Beaucoup danced like a butterfly, he most assuredly did not sting like a bee. For three minutes that seemed to pass slower than the seasons, Mercy buzzed around the ring, maintaining a steady presence in the corner farthest from Scuzzi, doing the Ali shuffle, gyrating his head, feigning with great flourish, and not once getting within ten feet of his opponent. Anon, Mercy Beaucoup fainted from exhaustion, falling face-first on the post. By this time, Weeping Willy had locked himself in the powder room and Viddi tried unceremoniously to pry the door open with a rusty umbrella in lieu of a crowbar as Dimitri Sciatscu voiced some reservations about the quality of his sparring partners.
At The Palooka Bar, Viddi was late for their meeting with South African trainer Ludwig Van Oizman, a contemporary legend west of Transvaal. Although Oizman had coached some Olympians of note in Jo’burg, he did not command an exorbitant fee in the land of the free, as he was just off the boat after causing a tribal dispute of some acrimony in his homeland. To boot, he met the one requisite no trainer in the Big Apple did: he’d never heard of Viddi.
“Sorry ’bout the delay, guv’nor.” Viddi was beaming with even more confidence than usual.
“No harm done. You have my fee, Mr. Golbranson?”
“In what sense?”
“In your pocket. In that sense.”
“With the neighborhood going to seed and all…” Viddi explained with forbearance.
“We gave you the dosh last night,” sighed Rhino.
“You left us ruined, man.” After his punishment at the hands of Scuzzy, Beardy found it somewhat difficult to speak.
“Well, I don’t have it on me, physically.”
Oizman, though not amused, knew the world too well to be angry. “You carrying it metaphysically?”
“You told us the dough might as well be at Fort Knox,” wailed Hulk.
“Let’s not get into politics.”
“Viddi, Viddi, Viddi,” singsonged Mercy Beaucoup, glaring at Viddi through the blackness of his eye.
“Rollo was celebrating his last outing as a free man for quite some time. You expect me to treat my own brother to tap water and easy-listening radio under such circumstances?”
Calmly, Oizman stood up and walked away.
“But who’s going to train Scuzzy?” bellowed Viddi with indignation as he tried to grab Oizman’s shirtsleeve.
“You do it for all I care.” Oizman tore himself free with a light middleweight’s grace of movement.
“Hey, Jungle Jim there isn’t as stupid as he looks,” exclaimed Viddi as the boys scowled at him in disappointed silence, reassuring them with the famous Viddi wink.
At the Ring of Fire Gym, Dan Prince had been listening long enough to the out-of-towner with the chapeau Alpin and thick sunglasses sing the praises of his prodigy—much too long, since the man kept tugging at his sleeve to the point of playing a tune to the jangling of Dan Prince’s vast array of rings and amulets.
“What title did you say your fighter holds, Mr. Gunnerson?” queried Dan Prince, his patience on the brink of exhaustion.
With caution, Viddi looked around. All it took was one palooka who recognized him and he’d be outward-bound faster than a mermaid out of a tuna factory. “The YMCU.”
“How can he be a champion when he’s never had a professional fight? In my fifty years in the game I’ve never heard of such a title.”
“It’s East European. You’ll have people from the former Ukraine stampeding at the gates.”
“The Ukraine?” Dan Prince could swear the Bedlamite was trying to play “When the Saints Go Marching In” by yanking hard enough at his sleeve.
“Scuzzy’s from Bucharest.” Viddi kept rattling the moveable jewelry store on Dan Prince’s person.
“And where do you hail from, Mr. Gunnerson?”
“In my day I was a contender in Lilleby, in Norway.”
“Professional boxing isn’t allowed in Norway.”
“I had to go all the way to Finland to beat guys into meatballs.”
“Also illegal in Finland.”
“It’s okay for Norwegians to box there, in the north.”
“Mr. Gunnerson, please go away.”
“Yumpin’ yemeni. Want to project your ham-and-eggers from m’boy, be my guest.” Viddi’s dramatic exit was somewhat foiled by his missing the door by seven inches as his dark glasses allowed for limited view.
All heads, bare and geared, Alpine and native, turned at the muffled explosion and flurry of strange curses followed by a soft hiss.
“Not again,” sighed Dan Prince.
Mambo le Primitif found himself unable to retrieve his gloved hand from the other side of the sighing boxing bag as he waited for some of the sand to sift out.
“Third bag this week.” Babycakes McGee, the trainer, yawned.
“About time he came out,” said Dan Prince softly.
“You’ll have to fly someone in from Touristown. Word’s spreading and no one east of Palookaville would be stupid enough to take him on.”
An angelic smile lit up Dan Prince’s face like all the votive candles at St. Peter’s, a portent he was about to make or save money. “Oh, Mr. Gunnerson. Wait…”
Joe, the owner, was none too happy to see the Katzenjammer Kids saunter into The Palooka Bar like an invading horde. To date, he had profited little from his acquaintance with Knold and Tot, the grandsons of the infamous Torsten “The Hooch” Jones—who spent the last fifty years of his life in Sing Sing after killing off a whole Elks Lodge in the Catskills with a batch of homemade brew labeled The Tallahassee Twister. Knold and Tot tried to slide inconspicuously towards the bar, no mean feat for the identical albino twins, Knold limping on his left leg and Tot on his right.
“I’m still in court because of that Elderberry Nectar.”
“Vintage stuff that. Chap had a defective immune system.” Tot did not take kindly to ingrates casting aspersions on their skills at the family trade.
“Check this out,” whispered Knold, affecting a conspiratorial glance.
“We call it ‘the Alabama Mama,’” hummed Tot softly but proudly.
With stealth, Knold opened his Tasmanian Devil bomber jacket, revealing a plain quart bottle. “Scentless as a Methodist altar. Go on the town and the missus won’t smell a thing
.”
“And you can tipple all you want while you do the racing forms at work,” added Tot. “It’ll sell like tutti-frutti ice cream in hell.”
“I’m still using your ‘Hiroshima Hummer’ for pest control,” objected Joe.
“Keep it as a free sample,” offered Knold. “The rubes’ll be crying out for more.”
“Dying for more, most likely,” retorted Joe.
“Just keep it away from heat. It’s got a kick,” warned Knold.
Joe offered neither remonstration nor resistance as Knold thrust the bottle into his arms, seeing he was out of paint remover.
At the round table, Scuzzy and Mercy Beaucoup had waited for over an hour, the match slated to start at any minute.
“Why no one let Viddo near boxing square?” wondered Scuzzy.
“He gets kind of…involved,” explained Mercy Beaucoup. “Say, want another Bud, Scuzzy?”
An inexpertly wrapped package under his arm, Viddi dashed in with a lot of Golbranson determination and the boys flocked over.
“Did you get the belt?” asked Beardy, shooting Viddi a glance harder than an algebra test.
“A slight snag. Had to make one myself.”
“Told you we shouldn’t hock our Babe Ruth cards,” wailed Rhino
“With Rollo going on the lam, was I supposed to say goodbye to my own flesh and blood for who knows how long, the constabulary on his heels, without giving him a proper send-off? Am I not my brother’s keeper?”
Sex, Thugs, and Rock & Roll Page 3