Off the Rack

by Paperback Rack

boozers as he could.

  I asked him for another Bass.

  “Fresh out. You drank the last one.”

  “Whitbread, then.”

  “I’ll look.”

  Swarthy, paunchy. Segundo had lustrous wispy fine hair the color of brown shoe polish all over his body, it seemed, except where it would matter the most for a thirty-year-old swinger: on the crown of his dull head. He wore khaki cargo shorts and navy knitted shirts like a uniform. Must have owned a dozen sets. Nike sandals. Wild and crazy guy.

  He gave me a Whitbread and wrote it on my tab.

  His place was the San Souci. Rose and aqua neon sign.

  “Know what you need here, Segundo? You need shirts with a logo.”

  Frowning. “What kind of logo?”

  “A Sans Souci logo. Whatever you like.”

  “Like maybe a sailfish leaping out of the water?”

  “Miami already has the Marlins.”

  “Don’t mention those putas in here.”

  “Wo, sorry.” I remember hearing he had lost a bundle on them through a Las Vegas bookie on the internet.

  With his nose solidly out of joint, he decided to quiz me. “You happen to know what Sans Souci means? Eh, flyboy?”

  I grinned, all toothy. “Without a care. That’s why I drink in your brassy establishment. I could carry my business to that trendy Art-Deco trattoria down the street. If that would suit you.”

  “As if. Now go away with your drink.”

  I began to go, then I said, “Seriously, if you want somebody to design a logo for you, Cassidy over there can do it. She’s an artist.”

  “The vampire girl with a ring in her belly-button?”

  “You should see her tattoos.”

  “Beat it.”

  Cassidy had already smoked two cancer-sticks. Her elfin nose was buried in a paperback book. Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite.

  “Ho, gorgeous!” That irritated her, but she let me get away with it because the last thing she wanted to be was politically correct. I simply couldn’t help myself. She was the most wonderful thing in my life.

  “Yew tawkin t’me?”

  “Excuse me, Travis.” I sat down.

  We shared a relaxed silent time. We watched the morning crowd come and go. The vegetarian bagel people. The Sante Fe omelet people. The hungry-as-a-truckdriver-chickenfried-steak-with-gal-gravy people.

  Segundo fed them all. His favored customers, of course, were those who spent the least time eating. They were those smart professional people in a hurry to be somewhere vital. Slim, manicured officer-types. Suits ordering breakfast Continental.

  Segundo must have thought their glow of success would rub off onto him.

  Cassidy toyed with my Panama hat. It was part of my uniform of tropical shirts, faded blue jeans and blazingly white Reeboks. Same lazy threads I wore mufti while on leave.

  She was a true creature of the night. Her affected visage was of chalky ennui. I had seen others from her nether-realm with similar masks.

  Were we lovers? I may have fantasized a May-September affair. But Cassidy didn’t have a romantic molecule in her body. We were two outsiders. Lonesome chums in a foxhole.

  Like the bourgeois dames drinking bloody marys, I too had a deep-sea tan. I had undergone more than one melanoma scare. An Air Force surgeon cut a chunk out of the bridge of my nose. The restructuring work gave me a tough, hard-bitten pug look. Believe me, it wasn’t a mask.

  Chief Master Sergeant Ted Carmody.

  Aircraft Refueling Specialist.

  Active duty: Vietnam, Turkey, Japan, Germany and Air Force One, Randolph AFB.

  “How do you like my buzzcut?” I asked her.

  She stroked the gray stubble on my head like she would the M or W on a tabby cat.

  “It’s still geezer. You gonna dye it?”

  “Yeah. Same color as Warhol’s wig.”

  “Well,” she chuckled. “Keep it under your hat.”

  Segundo was glaring at us.

  “I think he wants us to leave.”

  Her shrug was profound. “Fuck him.”

  “Let me look for cloves.” I wrangled down beneath our table. Found them.

  “Oh, thanks!” She smiled with sincere appreciation. Then: “Have you heard of Antonin Artaud?”

  “As a matter of fact, I have. His contemporaries were surrealists and nihilists. There was Dada and the Theatre of the Absurd. His was the Theatre of Cruelty. He went insane. Why the interest?”

  “I have this old CD. Bauhaus.”

  I almost launched into an interminable oration on the Bauhaus school of architecture. Caught myself.

  “My knowledge of rock music is nil. I’m a jazzbo.”

  Jazz, and the Heart of Darkness. Poetry of the Cosmos. Gutsy, raucous, chaotic disharmony that made sense. Be-bop, Bossa-Nova. Steel mills and quiet surf. My greats were Trane, Monk and Mingus. Jobim, Baden-Powell, Bonfa and Gilberto. Balm to my soul.

  I looked at Cassidy. She was amazing. Both slinky and clunky. I was hoping she would pass through this Goth phase and, like a chrysalis, morph into something vibrant and even more beautiful.

  She was about to begin her voyage of discovery and I wanted to impart to her my zest for life and love of learning. The pursuit of knowledge and understanding should be never-ending. The goal is but a tiny teardrop of wisdom.

  “You know a lot of stuff,” she said.

  “Some people would differ.”

  “No doubt. Does it matter?”

  “Not in the slightest.”

  “Good. Let’s blow this joint.”

  Segundo could not conceal his jubilation as we departed the Sans Souci.

  The autumn sun touched our faces kindly. A breeze from the bay rattled the fronds of coconut trees.

  We walked to a man-made cape that served as a boat-launch for townies. Saltwater Crackers. I remembered it well. From there we used to crank up our Evinrudes and zoom off, slappity-slap, to V-hull paradise.

  What the hell were we doing? When she took my hand and squeezed it, I nearly died.

  “You never married. Why?

  “Didn’t want to. Didn’t want kids.”

  “Bet you got laid a lot.”

  “All of them strangers.”

  Titillate

  Shannon Taylor

  It slowly dawned on me that all of this could have easily been avoided had I followed Leland’s advice. Just last week he’d told me, “Jean, don’t do it”. But, I’m stubborn. Just too damn stubborn to take good advice when I hear it. Now, it’s too late to turn back.

  I went to the animal shelter on Monday afternoon. As soon as 5:00 came around I locked the office and headed straight there in search of a beautiful, more mature (house broken) canine friend to share my home and heart with. When I got there I was informed that the shelter closed at 6:00 and that I was welcome to tour the pens as long as I liked and that if I wanted to see any of the “residents” personally to ring the bell on the wall and someone would come to assist me.

  Entering the area that housed all of the dogs ready to be adopted was an unnerving experience. The first thing I noticed was the smell. You’d think that it’d be a little funky with all of the food, slobbing, and shitting going on. There had to be close to 100 dogs—big, small, tall, short, skinny, fat—all kinds. But it didn’t smell like shit, spit, or food. It had an antiseptic smell. It smelled more like I was in a hospital than in an animal shelter.

  The second thing I noticed was the sound. None of the dogs were barking. Instead, they were all making a hissing sound…not like a snake hiss, but a hiss like a person fighting for their last breath…heggggh, heggggh, heggggh. It was a deep, guttural sound that seemed unnatural coming from such a diverse group of dogs—none of the sounds varied in pitch or tempo. Intermittently, all you heard was hegggh, hegggh, hegggh while inhaling a potent bleach and pine-sol perfume.

  The last thing I noticed upon entering the place where I’d find my lifelong furry companion was the activit
y of the dogs. The dogs were housed in metal chain-link cages about four feet wide and eight feet high in rows of ten. There were one or two dogs housed in each cage, each dog similar in size. There were two bowls in each cage in the back left corner, one with water and one with food. All of the dogs, in every cage were sitting at the front of cage where visitors walked by—perfectly still. None seemed to be jumping around vying for attention, none were wagging their tails, none were happily panting in anticipation of being “chosen” to go to a new and better place. They were all sitting perfectly still, all making that deep hissing growl and all looking in my direction..

  As I knew this was an important decision to make, one that would last for years to come, I wanted to do as thorough a job as I could in seeing each and every dog. I wanted to observe their initial behaviors, their physical characteristics, and most importantly, their response to me. I began to walk down the first row making my initial observations.

  As I walked past the cages none of the dogs displayed any distinguishing characteristics. They just sat there looking and hissing at me. I got close to two of the cages on the first row and made the usual “hi, doggy”, “how are you doing doggy?”, “would you like to go home with me doggy?” conversation. Nothing…no response except for hissing—hegggh, hegggh, hegggh.

  I continued my journey down the second, third, and fourth rows. More of the same. When I reached the fifth row, I could immediately see one dog stand out from the rest. He was a small black terrier and he was the only dog making any movement in the entire facility. He was housed alone about four cages down from the entrance of the kennel. Although, he too, was making that awful hissing growling sound, he was jumping from the left to the right of the cage and wagging