Fat Bald Jeff

by Leslie Stella

  Francis noticed the defaced Mumia Abu-Jamal sticker and came into my cubicle to offer me a replacement, but we couldn’t get the old one off my nameplate.

  I grunted with the effort of scratching at the edges with my thumbnail.

  “Why do they have to be so permanent?”

  “Because they’re stickers,” he said.

  We ended up just putting the new one over it. Francis slapped the sticker on sloppily and covered up part of my name. Now the nameplate reads FREE MUMIA DIE PREWITT.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  One of the graphic designers walked by and whinnied, “Where’s my free Mumia?”

  “Graphic delinquent,” I said under my breath, but Francis heard me and clucked his tongue in disapproval.

  “I mean artist,” I said. Old habits die hard.

  He said, “It is art, you know. It may only be for the cover of a technical library journal or brochure about the staff carnival, but I try to pick cool graphics and clean fonts. I’m no Gauguin, but this year’s Hot Dog Day flyer was killer.”

  “I’m all for art,” I insisted. “And I’m glad you’re no Gauguin. I don’t really care for mustardy paintings of native women.”

  “Listen,” he said, “what do you think of that website? I think it’s really great, especially how that one article listed the similarities between the canning of Big Lou in maintenance and the conviction of Mumia Abu-Jamal.”

  I turned back to my desk and shuffled my deck of cards nervously. “Yes, it appears Mumia has made it into the public consciousness.”

  Francis stroked his stubble and said, “Has he?”

  After lunch, the network collapsed again, and I was forced to copyedit drivel on paper. Took my time with seventeen pencils at the pencil sharpener in the common area and overheard gossip to the effect that certain of our production slaves were thought to be responsible for the Crook-Eye website. The production slaves! The hoi-polloi can hardly read, let alone compose poisonous prose! I was disgusted.

  “Well, I heard it was that one security guard who was fired last year for constantly looking over the stalls in the sixth-floor women’s bathroom,” said one secretary.

  “But Coddles thinks it was the production people,” objected another.

  The third secretary whispered conspiratorially to the others, “Whenever anything goes wrong around here, it’s always the temp’s fault.” They all looked over at the temp in the middle of the room, who was asleep at his desk.

  The third secretary stepped toward the temp, delicately sniffing the air. Spite withered her pointy bird face.

  She said, “That temp really stinks,” and pulled a can of Lysol out of the supply closet. She sprayed a big cloud over him. He coughed a little in his sleep.

  The secretaries saw me lollygagging at the pencil sharpener and stared at me until I left.

  There was no point in editing anything else, as the network kept crashing and zombies kept distracting me. They congregated in the hallways, talking about the website and speculating on the perpetrators. Four-thirty could not come soon enough. Last evening, Val and 2F had finally issued me a decent invitation to join in on the garden. I must have drifted around the yard for half an hour, staring forlornly into the manure pile, before they relented and asked me to participate. Val gave me the good news as 2F smirked in the background. I found their smugness incomprehensible, but then I have resigned myself to being the ignorant third wheel in their little group.

  “You mean fifth wheel,” Val said. “The third wheel is an integral part of any automobile.” We were all going to run up to a nearby nursery, owned by Chung’s brother, for some plants tonight. Scandal sheets and cold-hardy perennials—now this is living! I might even call Mother and try to be sympathetic again. As a daughter, I pride myself on being a great comfort in rough times.

  On my way out of the building (front door this time), I passed Fat Bald Jeff waiting for the elevator. He had just run out to the Italian joint next door and bought himself armloads of biscotti. I guess he was throwing over yucko vending-machine horror Bun in favor of exciting European pastry! Only I knew his fantastic expenditure was in celebration of our scheme. As I walked by, he shifted his weight from one fat foot to the other, scowled, slowly shut one eye, then opened it. Ah, a small signal in a code among spies, but it meant success. None of the zombies milling about the lobby would have guessed our clandestine partnership, nor would they have interpreted the grimacing wink as anything more than acid reflux or lazy eye.

  In keeping with the secret signs, I said, “The biscotti look good today.”

  He furrowed his brow and said, “I guess.”

  I implored him with my eyes. “The baking of the biscotti seems to have gone well, wouldn’t you say?”

  He inhaled deeply and nodded, flaring his nostrils and fluttering his eyelids. Come on, Jeff, now is not the time to play the fat, bald coquette.

  I pressed on. “The oven was hot, no?”

  The doors opened and he stepped into the elevator. “Yes, I get it.”

  “But—” I sputtered as the doors began to close.

  He smiled as he shoved three biscotti into his mouth. “There’ll be more.”

  I looked around in alarm—had anyone eavesdropped?—but the only person in hearing distance was Earl, the unarmed desk official, and he was snoring in his chair. On the front of the reception desk, someone had slapped a BONGS NOT BOMBS sticker.

  Didn’t have time to muse over Jeff’s cryptic “more.” Got back to the building shortly after five. Val was not home yet, and Paco and 2F were standing around the garden plots, talking vegetables.

  “Peppers, eggplant, tomatoes.” Paco ticked off the list on his gnarled fingers.

  “Right,” said Chung, marking off his clipboard with a Sharpie.

  I spoke up. “I’d like a few varieties of radicchio, for my sliced tofurkey tarragon sandwiches.”

  Everyone looked at me blankly. Chung shrugged and made a tiny mark on the clipboard.

  Stefan stepped forward and regarded me for a moment. He seemed to be sizing me up for some task. The blond comma of hair fell attractively over one icy eye, and he folded his arms across his chest.

  “We’re all going to have jobs here in the garden,” he began. “Paco has volunteered to water the perennials and vegetables and prune shrubbery. Val will be cutting the grass and weeding the side bed. I will be coordinating the purchase and application of manure and organic fertilizer and pesticides. Chung here will oversee plant and color selection and will haggle skillfully with his cheap brother about the prices. Your job is to weed the vegetable bed and to assist Alma, who is too infirm and crotchety to plant and take care of her vegetables.”

  Alma? The Hungarian wretch in 2R! No wonder 2F looked so satisfied when I accepted their gardening invitation. I am the fifth wheel.

  “If the old woman can’t tend her own plants, then she shouldn’t get involved,” I protested. “Who asked her, anyway?”

  “Oh, that’s nice,” said Stefan, “deny an elderly lady some vegetables in her twilight years. Very generous of you.” I saw three pairs of eyebrows descend in disapproval and three mouths harden into censorious frowns. Chung began to draw a line through my name on the clipboard.

  “No, wait, I’ll do it,” I replied hurriedly. “But why me?”

  “The rest of us already have jobs. Take it or leave it.”

  I swallowed glumly and nodded, looking up at the back porch off 2R. The decrepit witch stood there, a grim line of satisfaction cutting across her shriveled apple head.

  She called down, “Hop to it, young woman. I gave the Chinaman a list of things I want.”

  Mr. Chung muttered something exotic and violent under his breath and handed me her list. Chinaman! It’s obvious to anyone he is Korean.

  When Val got home from work, we all piled into Paco’s station wagon and drove off. Stefan sat in the front seat, and Val and Chung sat in the back. When I slid in next to them, Chung said he needed to sit cros
s-legged or he’d get carsick, and would I mind sitting in the way back? I heard distinct giggling as I clambered into the space usually reserved for dogs and fifth wheels. My khaki gardening skirt was not engineered for gymnastics.

  “Maybe you should have worn jeans,” said Val.

  I tightened the babushka around my head and vowed to ignore them the rest of the ride.

  After selecting Alma’s ridiculous vegetables and seeds—what kind of lunatic chooses watercress over arugula?—I was at last free to wander about the perennials and choose a few for myself. The men were not big on flowers, except for Paco’s boring marigolds and 2F’s hideous hybrid tea roses. Alma’s puckered, aged face loomed before me, and I found myself picking poisonous plants.

  “Monkshood?” questioned Mr. Chung’s brother, looking down at the quart container on my little red wagon. “Be careful. Every part of that plant is lethal.” Its bell-shaped blue flowers would look pretty lightly brushing against Alma’s insipid mustard greens.

  When we got home (again I was relegated to the way back of the station wagon, thorny rose canes jabbing me on all sides), we set out our plants in the garden, rearranging them for effect as Chung calculated space for seeds. I was dead tired and longed to rest, but I am not the type of girl who sits in the dirt. Laid across the picnic table and fell asleep.

  Val jabbed me awake with the trowel. He said more work could be done tomorrow. I hopped off the picnic table and fell down. The fancy lads’ club had tied my shoelaces together!

  We walked up the stairs with 2F and said good-bye. They reminded Val about going barware shopping with them this weekend, in preparation for next month’s blowout. I stood by expectantly, awaiting my party invitation.

  “Well, good-night,” they sang gaily, then shut the blasted door.

  Fumed up the next flight, but turned when I heard their door open a crack.

  Stefan called out, “Val, invite that hot, dark-haired guy who hoisted your roommate up the stairs the other night, will you?” Then giggling broke out behind the door as it clicked shut.

  “Oh, come on.” Val sighed as I threw a modest tantrum in the hallway. He pushed me toward the door, and before impact I caught sight of myself in our highly polished door knocker. Someone had drawn half a mustache on me with permanent marker.

  Skipped work. Spent forty minutes scrubbing my upper lip this morning as Val pretended not to notice. We ate our cereals in silence as our eyes drifted involuntarily to the other’s half ’stache.

  “It wasn’t me,” he finally said, picked up his keys, and ran out the door.

  Scrounged around in the back of my closet and dragged out Mother’s filthy old sari. I’d used it previously for a Halloween costume; today it would function as clothing. Luckily it had flecks of red running throughout the fabric, so I tied my red silk scarf across the lower half of my face and left the apartment. Only one person could make me feel better.

  “Girl!” A thin, reedy voice called out as I fled down the stairs. “Girl! You come by later so we can plan my vegetable patch.”

  “Thrills!” I shouted back and left the building.

  Sitting and smoking on the front stoop was Jadwiga, the building janitoress. She smirked at me as I adjusted my face scarf.

  “Hadn’t you better clean something?” I snapped.

  She appraised my grotesque, bedraggled sari and said, “Hadn’t you?”

  How dare the cleaning woman speak to me in that tone! Made a mental note to write a letter of complaint to the landlord. Walked briskly to the El. It was a bit nippy out, so I had to wear the fake Burberry over my sari. Looked asinine, but as my world is collapsing under the weight of Alma and my disfigurement, I really do not care. Crook-Eye, Ltd., is the only thing that keeps me going.

  Called Fat Bald Jeff at work from the train station. He answered on the twelfth ring.

  “Tech support,” he droned into the phone.

  “Are the biscotti fresh today?”

  Silence. Then, “Where are you? I went up to your cubicle, but Bev said you were playing hooky.”

  “I’m not playing hooky! I have a slight physical ailment.”

  “Please,” he interrupted, “no more about your spastic colon.”

  It’s not spastic colon. It’s irritable bowel, as I must have told him a thousand times.

  He asked me to meet him at his hovel tonight. He said the biscotti were in a fantastic uproar in the oven and we needed a new recipe.

  Hung up the phone and a unique sensation crept over me. Could it be the satisfaction of a job well done?

  Train seemed to travel faster than usual, and no one asked me for change in my stinking getup. When I exited in Evanston, the sun was shining and tulips were blooming everywhere. Stripped off the wretched raincoat and let the sun beat down on my sari. Walked down the quaint Main Street and caught my reflection in a bookshop window. Minus the Ernie Douglas spectacles and protruding bucks beneath the face scarf, I made a terrifically fetching foreigner.

  Gran was heartily surprised to see me, though a look of horror crossed her face as she took in the sari. Scandalous memories of Mother must have come flooding back. I lifted the face scarf, revealed the mustache, and told the whole story.

  “Oh!” she said, relieved. “But I don’t think Indian women cover their faces. It’s the Arabs.”

  I am not about to drape myself in a hideous black shroud just to look authentic. The sari is bad enough, but at least it is short-sleeved and cinched about the waist. I look awful in drab colors and shapeless muumuu things.

  Gran shuffled around looking for an ointment that would remove the mustache. I relaxed in her chintzy overstuffed armchair. Calmly regarding me from the wall of framed pictures was Father, age twenty.

  I didn’t care for that smug smile across the room. So I’m wearing Mother’s repulsive sari, so what? I had to, to complement my red silk face scarf.

  Gran came back with a foul-smelling unguent, which she smeared across my upper lip. The stench and the complacent grin of Father reminded me of the goat-salve incident of my childhood.

  “When Harvey was a young man, I used this cream on him that time he carved your mother’s and his initials in his arm, interwoven with crudely drawn roses,” she said. “Why did he have to use his left hand? We never could get rid of that scar.”

  I remembered the ugly deformity on his bicep. Have hated roses ever since. Why not the subtle prairie gentian? Why scarification at all? I would never carve the Lemming’s initials in my flesh. It’s bad enough that he leaves thumbprints on our doorknobs.

  “There,” she said, sitting back to survey her work. “Just let it sit.”

  She didn’t ask why there was half a mustache drawn on me with a Sharpie, or why I came all the way out to Evanston just for smelly salve. She picked up the newspaper and worked on the crossword puzzle, pausing only to ask about five-letter rumba bandleaders and six-letter Hungarian sheepdogs.

  On the wall behind her, near the fireplace, was a wooden rack of Delft china. Photos in sterling frames hung over the couch—me in my christening dress with my parents standing gloomily in the background, Father dressed in a Nehru jacket and Mother in her sari; Gran and Grandfather posing by a newly planted buckeye tree with teenage Father asleep in the hammock; my parents’ wedding day, such as it was, with Reverend Rainbow Dog officiating; vacationing at the seaside in Truro, Massachusetts, with grandparents and parents, everyone sitting in the sand and smiling.

  “Gran? Sometimes I think if Father were around now, he might like the direction my life is heading.”

  She smiled, not really understanding what I meant, of course. “Well, Adelaide, dear, he had some strange ways, but he always said he loved his little princess more than life itself.”

  “Me?” I asked. “I’m the princess?”

  “Of course.”

  “That was the word he used, ‘princess’? Not ‘Prissy Princess,’ but just plain ‘princess’?”

  She nodded. Wow. I always wanted to be a pri
ncess.

  Grandmother said her head hurt, and she put down the newspaper and stared out the window, chin resting in the palm of her hand. My eyes filled up with tears, due to the pungency of the ointment.

  All that remained of the mustache was a red blotch of irritation. Changed out of the lousy sari into pedal pushers and pink cotton blouse and tramped downstairs to Alma’s.

  “Sit down, girl,” she commanded. I obeyed, after slipping a magazine between me and her mildewy couch. Alma wore a buffalo-plaid men’s shirt with a tweed skirt and old-lady brogues. Her hair was an untidy mound of salt-and-pepper curls. Her apartment was stuffed with romance paperbacks, squalid rugs, cruddo furniture, ashtrays, and unpacked boxes. A tabby cat sat on the windowsill, licking itself silly. Alma lit a cigarette and eyeballed me. I coughed.

  “Been necking, I see,” she said.

  As if! Anyone who has applied more than udder balm to one’s face in the past fifty years could see that my lip was swollen and red from cosmetic treatment, not necking. I began to explain but she cut me off.

  “Never mind,” she said. “You girls are loose these days. Can’t expect better. Anyway, I’ve come up with a new list of chores for you. Get cracking.”

  I grabbed the list. Nestled among the mundane garden tasks were orders to sweep her porch, take out her garbage, and empty the cat box.

  This is the thanks I get for being a kind and unselfish person! I said I couldn’t touch the cat box as I am allergic. She squinted at me, but I kept my eyes wide and honest. As for the garbage, we agreed that if she left it bagged properly in the hall, I’d take it to the Dumpster on my way to work. I’d sweep her stinking back porch once a week, as long as I didn’t have to walk through her apartment to get there. I’d take my chances on the rickety fire escape.

  “What’s that noise?” she asked suddenly.

  I explained about the white puppy in the cage next door. We went to her second bedroom (in it stood an army cot and piles of horrible clothes) and looked out the window. Alma said, “Poor bastard,” while I counted the number of cigarette holes in her shirt (twelve).