Then she showed me pictures of her children and called them filthy names.
“A child that abandons his mother is worse than the devil himself,” said Alma. “I suppose you’ve left your mother alone in some nursing home somewhere.”
I looked at her in shock. She couldn’t possibly think I am old enough to have a rest-home inmate for a parent. I replied that my mother is not even fifty and lives in sin with a bricklayer. Alma nearly choked on her Lucky Strike.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” I said. “I brought you a little present.”
Astonished, she took the package that I had brought down with me. She cleared her throat a few times and said, “Hmph. Ten Little Indians. I never cared much for mysteries. But thanks.”
“You’ll like this one,” I said. “It has a surprise ending.”
Escaped back to my apartment in time for dinner. Soothed myself with leftover Waldorf salad and Val’s old ginger brandy. He came home from work and zeroed in on my upper lip. Relief softened his expression, but he said nothing. I gave him the BONGS NOT BOMBS sticker, kind of a peace treaty. He was really happy and mounted it on his driftwood Jesus clock.
“Something smells funny,” he said, poking around the garbage.
“It’s me,” I said matter-of-factly. “I stink from the ink-removing ointment.”
He nodded seriously. Then he paused, moved closer to me, and sniffed the air again. “No. It’s something else. You smell like an old person.”
Ick. “Oh. I was in Alma’s apartment.”
“God, it stinks to be old,” he said. I laughed lamely at his pun. Senior bashing seemed unfunny today.
He looked at me. “Are you going to shower?”
Of course not. I had to go to Fat Bald Jeff’s.
* * *
Endured the nightmare bicycle ride to the hovel. Wore Val’s motorcycle helmet from his Wild One phase. I have no bike helmet, and the rain bonnet really offers no protection from today’s moronic drivers. Crept down Jeff’s sidewalk. It seemed the grotesque mongrel in the front yard had stretched its chain, and I could feel its spittle and mangy whiskers as it tried to savage me.
“Stay,” I ordered. It advanced. “No,” I ordered again, with more force this time. It growled, shook its muzzle, and flecked me with bubbling foam.
If only Francis were here! He’s one of those animal rights fanatics and would know what to do. As a great lover of animals (except sordid housecats that lick themselves), I managed to feel sorry for the dog even as I planned to squash it beneath my nine-hundred-pound bike. Unfortunately, I lifted the bicycle only a few inches off the ground before I dropped it squarely on my false Chanel ballet flats.
“Shit!” I screamed, howling in anguish.
The mongrel promptly relieved itself on my bicycle and ran headfirst into the plastic garden gnome.
Left the bike outside, unlocked, and ran trembling up Jeff’s fire escape. Worse than the near-brutal attack upon my person and bike was the vision of Jeff’s wraith of a landlady slithering out his window and dropping down on bare, fungal feet to the fire escape. She smiled absently at me, patted her fright wig, and descended the steps.
Rushed past Fat Bald Jeff into the safety of the hovel. He agreed that the mongrel must have been put on a longer chain, as it had taken a nip at his nether regions after work today. It was pure providence that Jeff’s wallet, stuffed with five years’ worth of receipts and forty-five coupons for Ron’s Pizza and Chicken George, protected his backside from the snapping jaws. What’s worse, he said, was that the landlady’s son (the trailer-trash philistine) had cornered him by the garbage cans last night and threatened him with bodily harm unless Jeff returned the purloined pot.
“You can tell me, Jeff,” I said. “Did you steal his marijuana?”
A purple vein stood out on his forehead and his eyeballs vibrated within their sockets. Through clenched, ground-down teeth he said, “Do I seem like I smoke a lot of pot?”
I suggested that maybe he ought to start. He merely popped the top off a root beer Fanta and, without taking his eyes from me, slogged it all in one swig. A little dribbled down his chin, but I dared not say a thing.
He shoved a can of grape Fanta at me, which I reluctantly sipped after a thorough rubdown with my hanky. Couldn’t help but ask what he was doing with the landlady in his apartment.
“She broke in through the window,” he retorted. “I didn’t let her in. I was busy polishing my samurai swords in the bathtub.” I looked over at the creepo metal tub. Swords were strewn about on the floor and toilet, drying on towels.
“Anyway,” he continued, “I’m a month behind on the rent and she came up to collect. So I agreed to have dinner with her next week so we could discuss the payment arrangement.” He shuddered.
“Do you mean you’d submit to a battery of corpse kisses and fondling just to offset your rent?” I asked in disbelief.
Fat Bald Jeff narrowed his eyes at me. I gulped some Fanta and looked away. He knows a bit too much about my financial aspirations with the Lemming.
He said, “I have no choice. I was bypassed for another raise, and she wants to jack up the rent an additional twenty-five bucks. She says the neighborhood is in transition and she wants to be on top of the gentrification wave.” Mrs. Nibbett, though completely mad, is a shrewd capitalist.
He sat down at his computer and motioned for me to pull up a dilapidated hassock. It was warm up in the attic, even though it was not yet May. At the rear, there was a round window the size of a basketball and some holes in the roof where pigeons flew in to roost. I said summer must be brutal up here, but he just shrugged and said in the hot months he did most of his work in the bathtub.
As Jeff brought up the website, a smile split his head like a melon. He said there’d been talk in the Hole about organizing a protest rally to get Big Lou rehired. Jeff had finally tracked down a photo he thought he’d lost, of the operations manager skulking about Lou’s locker with an armload of squeegees. Hope surged within me, as I felt Big Lou was my pet project.
“Jeff,” I said breathlessly, “I feel so weird. It’s all tied up with Big Lou being exonerated and our co-zombies getting a good look at what the brass has been up to. I can’t explain it … it’s like, like—”
“Concern for another human being?” he suggested.
It’s possible that before the advent of Crook-Eye and my education re: the janitorial conspiracy and the larger political prisoner situation, I may have been a mite thoughtless about others.
I asked, “Where did you get all these pictures? The zombies flogging themselves on the dungeon floor during the Christmas party and the OM planting the stolen squeegees and so on?”
Fat Bald Jeff smiled wryly. He said he had a source, another employee even more disgruntled than he. Who could be more disgruntled than Fat Bald Jeff? He wouldn’t name anyone, other than to say that guys who’ve pushed the mail cart around the halls of the Place for thirty years accumulate a lot of information without being seen.
“I thought the mailroom people were all temps,” I said. He said that was a common misconception; most employees viewed low-level, invisible peons as temps. Felt humbled. I may have to get used to my views being common.
After a moment I said, “Some people have it worse than I do at the Place.”
He patted me kindly on the shoulder and said, “You’re learning.”
Fat Bald Jeff then recounted the day’s reign of disorder. The constant influx of e-mail between staff had shut down the network again. Department heads were demanding action from the top executives, who in turn demanded action from the department heads. Zombies were questioned all day long by their unit heads, and tech support was ordered to search all files on the building network. Many employees placed burning votive candles and bouquets of flowers by Big Lou’s old locker. The previous night, Fat Bald Jeff had left anonymous messages at the news desk of the Chicago Sun-Times, alerting them to the website. A reporter contacted him before work by a secret e-mail
address and conducted a brief online interview about the misdeeds and criminal activities of the bigwigs at the Place. Jeff faxed him copies of his information, and the reporter called the executive director of the Place for her point of view. She had a big fit on the phone, and the first article in a series on corporate crime would appear tonight in the evening edition of the Sun-Times!
“Did you tell the reporter you were Jesus Maria, project manager?” I asked.
“Oh no,” he replied, “that’s yours. I gave my alias as the Ham Sandwich, vice president.”
Jeff leaned back in his chair, folded his hands over his big belly, and smiled wickedly. He looked like a dark and demented Friar Tuck.
I said, “This is going to be big, isn’t it?”
He said, “Yes.”
We updated the site with new pictures and text, including a shot of Coddles crying under his desk while Mr. Genett threatened him. Jeff explained that the videoconferencing camera and the computer in Coddles’s office were always on, recording everything digitally, even though Coddles assumed he was turning his computer off at night.
I shook my head. “I still don’t really understand how you managed to do this.”
Jeff smiled grimly and said, “Closed circuitry. Other stuff. I’ve been recording this crap for years through the videoconferencing software. On my lunch hour today, I installed a tiny digital camera on the front of my anonymous mailroom contact’s mail cart. I think we got some good pictures of zombies outside their supervisors’ offices, waiting to be interrogated. I’ve also been futzing with the accounting mainframe so that it sends my hovel computer duplicates of expenditures on the individual department budgets.” He showed me an expense report. It seemed that every department head had used surplus budget to redecorate bigwig offices or build executive bathrooms. No one spent money on ergonomic computer chairs. The hump between my shoulder blades throbbed in resentment.
We sat down and designed a new splash page to replace “Pigs at the Trough.” As Jeff searched for appropriate graphics, I began with a short Crook-Eye mission statement. I wrote several snarky drafts but settled on the plainest one, the one least snide. Somehow, it expressed my real feelings most clearly.
Thank you for visiting our home page again. No doubt we piqued your interest yesterday with our brutal, unflinching exposé of the NAL executives. Our purpose in posting this website is not merely to humiliate our bosses, but to incite your outrage at the offensive acts they have committed—heinous crimes that end up robbing us not only of decent work conditions but of our human rights as well. Perhaps they will think twice next time they spend surplus company budget on bank art for their washrooms instead of proper desk chairs for employees. Perhaps they will reconsider propositioning the administrative staff with the promise of salary perks in exchange for vile groping in the cafeteria. Our purpose is to elevate the common laborer, the Big Lous of our world, who have suffered injustices at the claws of the big business behemoth, been sucked dry by the corporate vampire. Think not-for-profits aren’t “corporate” or “big business”? Think again.
Resistance is not futile.
Sincerely,
Jesus Maria and the Ham Sandwich
Fat Bald Jeff read it over in silence. He gruffly threw an arm around my shoulders and squashed me briefly, saying, “Well done.” Lump in my throat. Felt like I’d accomplished something worthwhile.
“We should have a logo,” he said. “How about a giant bloodshot eyeball to represent us, and a hoe to represent the workers?”
“I have an idea,” I responded, recalling my dear coffee mug. “What about an armadillo perched atop the giant bloodshot eyeball? Its tough shell symbolizes the character armor we must bear against corporate crime.” Naturally, I was still opposed to society’s mediocrity (the original enemy of my armadillo mug). But sometimes larger issues come to the fore.
We finished our new logo design and fine-tuned the updates. We had another hour before the late edition of the paper came out, so we relaxed a bit. Jeff insisted on taking a shower in his spotlight bathroom. He said he had not showered in days and wanted to be fresh and squeaky tomorrow when the Place read the newspaper article. I sat at the computer and wrote a letter of complaint to my landlord.
Dear Mr. Lionakis,
Although you have provided us with running water most months and permission to beautify your yard, which in turn will raise your property value and accordingly our rent, I must protest against our surly and incompetent janitoress. Presumably, you did not hire Jadwiga to sit on the front stoop, smoke, and make smart comments to the tenants, yet that is the unfortunate situation at present. The hallways are a disgrace, and cobwebs are all too visible between the sixth and seventh banister posts on the third floor. In addition, a slice of cotto salami laid on the carpet in front of the washing machine for four days until one of the rats finally carted it away. I abhor tattle-tales, but we all know Jadwiga’s fondness for piquant lunch-meats.
Mr. Lionakis, there are many illegal immigrants in our neighborhood; won’t you give one of them the chance to clean our building properly?
Regards,
Mr. Chung
I think I used just the right combination of authority and politeness. I don’t want to infuriate the man, as he is part of a powerful cabal of Greek landlords who wield might throughout Chicago like a burning platter of saganaki.
I had printed out the letter and slipped it into my threadbare knockoff Kate Spade handbag when I heard a sound at Jeff’s door. As I turned, I saw, through the transparent shower curtains surrounding the tub, Jeff’s fleshy bulk scrubbing away. Ugh, my stomach lurched in response. Beyond, I could just see the hovel door creaking open, inch by inch. A skinny leg in white jeans stepped through silently, followed by a mangy paw. Frightened, I hid under the computer desk. Damn Fat Bald Jeff and his sudden need for cleanliness! Over the running water, he couldn’t hear the landlady’s son advance. I scrunched farther underneath the desk, watching the dog sniff around unleashed. The guy poked around in Jeff’s milk crates for a minute, then spied his nemesis hosing off in the middle of the room.
“Heh, heh,” the creep chuckled softly. “Come, Kong.” Kong first ran into one of the load-bearing pillars in the loft, then trotted up to his master. My eyes were glued to Jeff, willing him to snap out of it. He continued to scrub. How many layers of grime could there be?
“Gonna git it now, fat boy,” said the ruffian, and he whispered to the mongrel, holding it by its scruff. The twosome crept forward and the dog began to growl.
In the bathroom, Jeff reached for a towel. Chaos erupted!
The landlady’s son tore open the shower curtain and released his hold on Kong, who leapt up with frothy verve. At the same moment, Fat Bald Jeff bounced out of the metal tub, brandishing a samurai sword high above his head, completely nude and extremely moist.
Dog came up. Sword came down. I shrieked and hid behind my hands. Moments later, as I peeked fearfully through my fingers, I saw the trailer-trash philistine run screaming from the hovel, arms flailing above his head, as Fat Bald Jeff stood above a mass of gore. Blood poured out of a stump where the mongrel’s head had once been!
Chapter 9
Head throbbed. Felt feverish. Fat Bald Jeff doesn’t own any sort of wheeled vehicle, so he made me sit in my plastic handlebar basket as he pedaled us hell for leather to my house. The neighborhood toughs watched us as we sped down the street at ninety miles an hour: an enormously fat man riding a pink girl’s bike, Austin Powers shoved in the front basket. I hit my head on a low-hanging tree branch and probably would have been knocked out but for the motorcycle helmet.
The busybodies in 2F stuck their heads out of their doorway and peeped down at Jeff and me as we wrestled for the bike in the lobby.
“Just leave it here!” he exploded.
“I can’t! Everything must go in its proper place,” I cried. First it’s bikes in the lobby, then it’s crack dealers in the hallway; from there, a short step to feral cats
overrunning the building.
Jeff wrested the bike out of my feeble grasp and threw it down the basement stairs. It made a horrible racket as it clattered and bounced off the steps and landed in a mangled heap at the entrance to the laundry room.
The misfortune with the tree branch had made me woozy, and I crumpled to the floor in agony.
“Come on,” urged Jeff, “get up.” I said I couldn’t and for him to go on without me, but I expect my voice was muffled from the helmet because he ignored my pleas and hoisted me fireman-style over his shoulder to carry me up the stairs.
Upside down, I saw 2F and hideous Alma enjoying the show. Jeff made a quick turn and I banged my head on the handrail. Only the motorcycle helmet saved me from permanent injury.
Mr. Chung asked, “What happened? Is that blood on her?”
Jeff said, “I couldn’t begin to explain.”
“Rough sex,” Alma summed up succinctly and shut her door, dragging all her furniture across the room to block the door.
“Do you need help?” asked Stefan.
“I think so,” huffed Jeff, “she weighs a lot more than she looks.”
“It’s all in the helmet,” replied Chung, and the three of them had a nice chuckle as I dangled from Jeff’s shoulder, screaming into a black hole of social oblivion.
Together they got me up the last flight and dumped me in front of my door. I rolled around on the floor, trying to right myself, as 2F wrote out an invitation to Jeff for their big party next month.
“Bring a date,” they said, “but not ... you know.” I believe some gesture was made, then I heard 2F giggle their way down the stairs. I struggled and got my head stuck between the banister posts.
Upon hearing the ruckus, Val Wayne opened the door. Jeff cleared his throat.
“Hi, remember me? Fat Bald Jeff, and uh, I think Addie needs some help ...” Jeff’s voice trailed off as he tried to explain why I was covered in gore. Val, I must say, handled the situation with admirable efficiency. After releasing me from the banister posts, he ordered me into the shower to clean off the blood. He prepared mugs of hot milk and whiskey for us and set out extra blankets and pillows on the disco couch. Once settled, he asked Jeff for the full account. He silenced me several times as I tried to add my two cents; he declared my version incoherent though imaginative.
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