by Lorraine Ray
My dipshit of a landlord is a retired Air Farce nutcase, Major Tight-ass Roman Fernandez, overly proud co-owner of the dilapidated Don Francisco Apartments. With those hundred dollar bills of Marsha’s at the ready, I know Tight-ass will soon be off my case. I review my happy money situation and think about how I shared with Rodney the facts about Marsha loving me, however Rodney had not been convinced. In fact, Rodney had said some very upsetting things later, after we got home to Rodney’s place. At some point he’d intimated Marsha might be in love with someone else. I knew that was false; nobody’s interested in Marsha because she’s overweight and unattractive, except for her blonde hair, blue eyes and cute feet. She also has a good personality. Nothing else about her would appeal to another man and she has a kid, which is a liability to most men. I like Bailey, but I’m fairly certain nobody else would. The kid is precocious and too energetic.
Groceries now cram the counter of my crummy little kitchenette, the interior of my refrigerator and a cardboard box which serves me as a larder. I can’t remember when I’ve had that much food in the apartment, and a lot of it is ramen and rice and beans, which will last forever. A shopping trip late yesterday for a coat had used up forty of the remaining cash, and I got a needed car repair booked. That would cost plenty, maybe three hundred, but I’m flush now. After I pay Roman the overdue rent, I plan to stock up on expensive Danish ales, the only extravagance I allow myself. I might even have some money left after all that.
At a quarter-to-three, I pull my Subaru beside the curb in front of El Pueblo Drugs; I walk the hundred paces or so to the back of the ratty little pharmacy, which Tight-ass Fernandez runs. He’d paid for a bizarre mural on the side of the pharmacy which showed a scary curado cooking herbs for a bunch of sickly kids gathered in a circle.
Sliding my wallet out of the front pocket of my black jeans while walking, I count out the six hundred dollar bills before I knock on the rear door. If I have it ready that will be less time talking to my landlord. Well, that day I know Roman will have to get out of my face with his goddamned smart-ass remarks about my late rent, month after month, which he calls chronic, because he is a pharmacist, and I think: I’ll give him chronic all right, right in his tight ass if he doesn’t be careful around me, the ridonkulous swag. But I know I have to pay up soon or face eviction and at least I got more money than I needed from Marsha and as a consequence I’ll be able to eat tamales and bean burritos and good crap for another month at which time my goddamn tax refund will be winging its way to my checking account, thank you kindly Uncle Samuel and Mister Earnest Income. And all this dough lumped together will be providing me with sufficient dinero for another couple month’s fucking rent or possibly three. Shazam! I hadn’t fucking thought of the possibility of having three months’ rent ahead of time! It’s all true and that meant adios troubles and torments, and I hope, perhaps, I’m actually free and clear, God willing, but I don’t happen to believe in him much.
Roman Fernandez appears at the door.
“Vig, my son.” Mr. Fernandez holds out a dry and cracked gray palm where I lay the six hundred dollar bills. Ugh, I think for the millionth time, why doesn’t he get himself some hand cream from that pharmacy of his and smear it on good and thick? That palm is like wood left in the desert sun for ten years.
“Very good, excellent, Vig. You’ve got it all here in time,” says my landlord, stuffing the bills in his white coat pocket and writing out a receipt for me, “and so I guess I’ll have to tell my ex-wife to stop the eviction. I hated to evict you, because you’ve been a good tenant and no one complains about noise from your apartment at all. The old ladies have nothing but praise for you and say you’re so friendly. You joined them in Canasta last week?”
“Yeah, once. Twice. I try,” I answer sanctimoniously. But I’m awfully tired of buying that foul homemade Divinity candy which Mrs. H. and her Canasta crowd are constantly foisting in my direction. They may be poor dears, but I cannot be sponsoring their culinary catastrophes anymore. Perhaps I’m the only person buying it!
“I hope this means you are going to be prompt with your rent in the future, huh?” asks the good tight-ass pharmacist in his deep baritone and with his sunken eyes staring at me. “But I know what it’s like not to have enough money, once in a while. I was poor once, too, you know. How about taking a second job? That rodeo museum gig seems low-paying.”
Sure, Tight-ass, sure. You were poor a long time ago and remember fuck-all about it. You wouldn’t give a starving man the time of day. The rodeo museum job is perfect for a writer; I do fuck-all there and nobody bothers me for hours because the museum is full of worthless old carriages with torn up interiors and stinky saddles and tack from the last century. What more could a guy want in a job, huh? Responsibility? That’s for idiots. I’m not taking a second job! That was the second person to suggest that shit to me.
“Ah, listen, you went to college, right?” asks Tight-ass.
“Yes,” I intone solemnly. Oh here it comes, the old, I-went-to-college-routine, huh. It worked a charm on some who had and some who hadn’t. Of course, Mr. Fernandez is a pharmacist, so I suppose he went to college, for many more years than I did and in a more difficult subject.
“Lemme buy you dinner,” Tight-ass says, “I want to talk to you about something. I’ll text my ex and tell her I’ve got the rent from you. My pharmacist’s assistant can finish out the day for me. We close at five, anyway. I don’t see why he can’t assume more responsibility.”
A few minutes later Tight-ass emerges in a pair of slacks and a black turtleneck sweater. I, thoroughly merry to be treated to a free dinner, stroll in the cool January afternoon with my landlord to the neighborhood restaurant, Baja Diner. Fate was on my side and now I was about to get a free dinner! This place is not as nice as the place I was at with Rodney the night before, but serviceable, in its own sleazy way. The chrome tables need wiping and someone in the kitchen plays country music too loud.
Mr. Fernandez sits in a booth, and I join him. We order two beers and two hamburgers and fries with both orders and hand the dirty paper menus to the waitress when Tight-ass jumps in by saying, “So what do you happen to know about the possibility of man ever understanding the absolute infinite of Spinoza’s God and Ethics?”
Well, I think I heard some horrifying question like that. Blah, blah, blah, ethics, blah, blah, you know. Spinoza, blah, blah. I sit there like a frozen stooge for a moment after Tight-ass stops talking, while I try to remember who the fuck Spinoza is and what he fucking promoted. After he says this, my landlord locks his fingers together across his turtleneck sweater with one elbow on the table and one on the back of the booth seat. It looks like he is planning to leave soon since he’s stumped me with the Spinoza crap.
Ostensibly I did go to college, although as a practical matter I spent the majority of my time ogling and bedding women. It was going to take some heavy-duty searching in my brain to remember anything at all about Spinoza or God or Ethics.
And then I think of it: the perfect, miraculous reply. It comes to me out of the blue and I intone: “Spinoza’s ethical construct has been effectively destroyed by the proliferation of Internet porn.” If anyone gets pseudo-intellectual with me, I always resort to an answer which incorporates Internet porn. In my experience it works a treat. You can try this yourself.
“Exactly!” agrees Tight-ass.
Several waitresses and diners in the restaurant stare at our booth because Roman exclaims this so loudly.
“My God! I’m going to give you a month’s free rent for that. Two! Two months. Forget about your overdue rent. Here, take your money back! I’m so glad I thought of taking you to dinner. I could tell you were a very well educated man with an interesting perspective on life. Spinoza’s ethical construct. Internet porn. Wow, I mean, wow!”
It’s funny because the first thing I think about, after Tight-ass hands back the six hundred dollar bills, is Marsha and Bailey and how I’d gone through all that rigmarole, begging for rent money from Mar
sha, for nothing. I swear to God, my luck was turning, and yet I feel disgusted by what I’ve done to Marsha now that the need is removed. It shocks me to realize how I feel about it. I ought to be happy, so what’s causing all the disgust I feel at myself? Here is Mr. Fernandez, excusing me the late rent and the next two months’ rent and I’m feeling guilty! It’s so fucking weird! It’s like I’m stupid or something.
After our orders arrive, I sit across the booth for an hour eating my hamburger and fries and listening to all the ramifications of Spinoza’s ethics and Internet porn as my landlord sees these things. I contribute little to the weird conversation we are having. Mr. Fernandez has some very strange interests in the porn line, I discover, to my distress, as I get wood listening to him. Ah well. This might have been a factor in Mr. Fernandez’s divorce.
So as I listen to Tight-ass about Spinoza’s ethics and how much he personally likes Internet porn, in this boring time, I think about good old Marsha who has saved the day as is her want and custom, although now I didn’t needed her to save the day, but so be it, and that was the truth about her because she had come to my aid before, but mostly for minor swag such as a twenty dollar bill here or there or a ride to someplace when my car broke down, and I had forgotten the rides, and weren’t there an awfully lot of those? Oh, Rodney would say she gave everybody rides. Rodney would say she gave him a ride across the continent. Rodney was such a bullshit artist. But weren’t the rides truly more evidence on the side of her affection for me? The rides aren’t as large or as important as this loan of money is, and, that’s right, right at the grimy booth at the Baja Diner I suspect again, but don’t know for sure, that Marsha happens to be in love with Yours Truly, her oldest and dearest amigo, one of the members of the wild bunch, a fellow writer from way back when. When when was when, actually. Well, to be honest with myself, not that way back; five years isn’t that long; we graduated from college together in 2009, a year full of ridonkulous hope for me, now that I remember back to it through the fog of drunkenness and winsome southwestern nights of weed. Oh, ho, yeah, you know, that was a glorious time.
“Ever hike to Sanchez Falls stoned?” I ask my landlord who is checking his texts. That is not a wise thing to do, but Mr. Fernandez and his porn obsession has made me suspect my landlord is not such a tight-ass after all.
“Yes. Yes, I did once.”
“No kidding? Crazy, right?”
“Yes, it was. I believe I ended up naked in one of those mossy tanks with a very cute canyon frog sitting on my forehead or that might have been a girl. I hear there is a naked hiking club, by the way, but they won’t let anyone over thirty join, dammit. Listen, Vig, I have to pick up my girlfriend now. Her hot yoga session ended and she’s rung out. This conversation has been what I needed. I won’t forget the two free months of rent, don’t worry. Don’t think about rent until March, maybe April. I’ll be in touch.”
I wave in my landlord’s direction as Mr. Fernandez leaves and I lose myself in memories of my undergraduate days, of getting so drunk and staying awake all night, of talking and smoking weed, wandering from one place to another, stumbling around this desert town under the stars, waking up in God-knows-whose yard to the sound of doves and woodpeckers in the saguaros. Those were heavenly times. Dreaming up my vampire novels, imagining vampires in their various day jobs as mechanics, accountants and mortgage brokers.
“I am a vampire novelist,” I say, leaning backward to shake the hand of a large man who seems to be a trucker and who eased his bulk into the booth next to us while Tight-Ass Fernandez and I dined.
“Oh wow! Successful?”
“No, no.”
“Oh, that’s too bad.”
“Would you give me your opinion on a story idea?”
“Glad to. Shoot.”
“Um, how about this. A vampire pharmacist. Pretty good idea, huh?”
“I’m hearing slushing sounds. I hope it’s not my pacemaker. Is that what you hear?”
“It’s the icemaker at the back of the bar. Now, listen, picture the lonely pharmacy in an old run-down, pock-marked adobe…the name of this shack is El Pueblo Drugs. Someone approaches thinking…they are consulting…a Mexican herbalist, but instead it is…a vampire! The vampire’s name is like…Juan Dracula, or something. Wait. Maybe, Jose V. Piro. Get it? V. Piro standing for—vampiro! Cool, super cool. I’m thinking of some amazing shit today. I’ve had such good luck in the last couple of days.”
“This is very interesting. You aren’t as entertaining as Antique Wars, but you’re a close second.” The man leans back for a moment while the waitress slides a plate in front of him.
“Thank you, thank you kindly. To think, I’m almost as good as a reality TV show. That’s an achievement. Well, I have been saying as much to my friends. And you are an inspiration, dude. I hope to God that vampiro is Spanish for vampire. Let me google that…yep, vampiro is Spanish for vampire and it’s also Lithuanian for vampire. I must be getting drunk; I can’t say Lithuanian. Can you? No? Cool. Do you know how getting money frees you up, dude? What would it be like to have endless money and think up all the crazy crap you wanted and write it? That would be a dream.”
“For you, a nightmare.”
“What? Oh, you mean a nightmare because I write all these horror stories with vampires? I get it. But, you know, instant remorse comes too. Comes right alongside the getting of money in nefarious ways. You’ve noticed? Uh-huh.”
“What are you feeling so bad about?”
“Marsha.”
“Who’s she, if you don’t mind my asking?” The trucker digs into a plate of chicken fried steak covered with salsa.
“Oh, I don’t mind you asking. In fact I like to discuss her. You see, I’m pretty sure she’s in love with me and it’s taken me by surprise. I borrowed several months of my rent and she didn’t even say much to me when I came in for the money, rolled her chair over to her purse and took out the bills like it was all a big Nothing Burger.”
“I have found women to be very cheap with money, unless it’s for their clothes or their makeup, therefore there could be some meaning in what happened to you.” The trucker wipes his mouth with a paper napkin and balls it up in his fist. He drinks some beer slowly.
“Yeah. Exactly. I think so! I’m very glad to have run into you. I have found women to be cheap, too. This is a clue to the situation, isn’t it?”
“I would tend to see it that way.”
“Giving away her money. ‘Hi, Vig,’ she said, ‘Are you going to make it on time to your landlord? Good.’ Well, we’d already discussed the amount, but I wouldn’t say she looked unhappy or anything. It was so, so easy, too easy, to get that dinero from Marsha, who I figure I can use for dinero from now on when I want it, not that she’s got a lot more, dammit to hell, and I know Bailey’s shoes and clothes are going to take a lot of what she does get. Guilt is a terrible thing to have. I’d rather have the clap or something.”
“I personally wouldn’t go that far, hombre. Who’s Bailey?”
“Her kid. Wish I didn’t have the capacity to feel badly about things; I would get far ahead in life if I didn’t have a conscience.”
“What you need, son, is a rich girlfriend who is without a kid.”
I put my beer down fast. “Fuck, I’ve thought of that. Why do I keep hitting up tassels who are destitute and poor and have a bunch of babies already? Logic should tell an aspiring person like myself the destitute cannot help anyone, since they cannot help themselves.”
“Exactly, buster.”
“And the poor who have children on top of that? Damn, that is dumb. That is super stupid. I never thought of myself as stupid, but I am. I should make friends with the rich or better yet the childless rich and therefore have a wealthy benefactor eager to help me whenever I need dinero because for them money means nothing, a pittance, and therefore me as the leech will feel less guilt. I think in the balance of the world this is a net positive; the fact that artists leech off the rich. This is somethin
g lots of writers and artists had to go through, so what’s the big deal? They call them benefactors. As a writer you have to suck it up. I think I write vampire stories because of the need writers have to drain benefactors. Also, vampires are a symbol of the capitalist system as it drains the lifeblood of the people or something. I am a writer who drains the lifeblood from people I meet to get story ideas. Dude, I keep telling myself, though, to hang out where the hanging out is good. What can Marsha do for me? She’s broke. I have to be honest, at least to myself. I am making a major mistake there, and I can see it like the fucking writing detective that I am. Assets are limited there, bro. And besides that, I happen to know she is saving up her money for a writers’ retreat in Boise. But I repeat myself.”
“I don’t believe you mentioned that. That this lady was a writer. No, you didn’t say that before.”
“I wouldn’t go that far. Calling her a writer. She attempts modern romances. Those do not qualify as actual writing.”
The trucker sits up for a moment and drinks his beer. “If you say shit like that a lot to her, I don’t know if she has the love thing going for you.”
“Hmm, no, you mean she’d be offended?”
“Exactly.”
“Well, Marsha isn’t sensitive. Once, when we had a class together, Marsha made a stab at describing me to the class, which was an assignment we had to do. I never got to write one back at her. So to describe me…she wrote it up for Dumb-ass Writing 354 and she read it aloud for the whole class to hear. I keep it in my wallet.”
“After all those years.”
“Yeah. It’s a little tattered and torn, because I read it occasionally. Would you be so kind as to read it aloud to me?” I hand over the folded piece of notepaper I have always kept. I hate to even part with that thing.
“All righty-o. Wait. I need my reading glasses.” He pats his pockets. “Ah, let’s pass it to this gentleman beside me and perhaps he’ll read it to you.”
A lonely man at a nearby table perks up at being included in our conversation, which probably had interested him intensely, though he hadn’t wanted to show it.
“Please read it loudly,” I say, as the trucker hands the piece of much-read, lined note paper over to the man.
“Ah-hem,” says the little cooperative reader. “‘Marc Viglietti. The skinniest, meanest looking douchebag…you’ve ever had the misfortune to have ogle you. Creepy green eyes, bulging out of his head like a toad, and a jaw and teeth that are a gaping front loader. Short and soulless, with long blonde hair that he tints black on the ends. Where the black hair fades to blonde, the strands are kinda greenish. Wears a black T-shirt with something awful splattered across it usually, something like a Creepshow comic book cover with a guy screaming or fake bullet holes.’”
“Are you crying?” asks the trucker.
“Rhinitis. Gets way worse at dusk.”
“‘He favors skinny black jeans (does he have only one pair!) and black cowboy boots. That’s Viglietti for you. His voice is high-pitched, a little nasal. Midwestern, he says, and his complexion is sickly white on his cheeks which are covered with moles, pimples, and deep pits.’ Fits you to a tee,” says the reader passing it back, “she’s a great writer.”
“I know. If only she wouldn’t waste her talent on romances.”
“I’ve changed my mind. The person who wrote that might love you,” says the trucker, downing his beer and belching.