Kill Two Birds & Get Stoned (2 page)

two

It must have been about two weeks after that when the cops showed up at my door. To be technically correct, they did not show up at my door. They rapped on the window of my basement apartment. That's another bad feature I forgot to mention. When you live in a basement apartment, sometimes you look up from toasting your bagel and you see a cop standing next to a trash can, rapping on your window with a nightstick that wants to be a Louisville Slugger when it grows up. The cop is crouching by the window and he has a clear view of everything going on in your apartment. Fortunately, he only catches you toasting a bagel. Imagine if he'd discovered you a few moments before involved in a more provocative pastime such as self-gratification or smoking dope or, God help us all, writing.

I saw one cop gesturing to me from between the garbage cans, toward the front door of the building. At that time in my life, I was not very paranoid and in fact had nothing at all to hide, so I buzzed the cops into the building. The two of them clumped around in the hallway for a minute and then I opened the door and they popped up about the same time the bagels did. I took this as a good sign. For one thing, it was the first time the toaster had worked in weeks without burning the bagels and making the apartment look like the pope had just died. For another, it was the first time anybody'd come to visit me for a while. I'd never in my life been visited by cops. I couldn't imagine what they wanted.

Two cops and a novelist with writer's block can pretty well take up most of the space in a small basement apartment. That was before the fish tank, but it was still a tad bit claustrophobic. They established that I was, indeed, Walter Snow, but they didn't seem in any particular hurry to get down to business.

"Nice place you have here," said one of the cops. He was a thin, hatchet-faced man whose name appeared to be Roth.

"Ain't every window in New York," said the other one, "where you get a view lookin' up at garbage cans." He chuckled a bit and had a fairly large gut and his name was Shelby.

"Everybody finds their own level," said Roth. He didn't chuckle. He didn't seem to be the chuckling type.

"Well, what can I help you with, officers?" I said.

'"What can I help you with, officers?'" mimicked Shelby. "That's a good one."

"How about we ask the questions," said Roth, with a sneer of disgust.

I was truly mystified. I couldn't get the bagels out of the toaster and I couldn't get the cops out of the apartment and I couldn't figure out what the hell they were there for in the first place. I was starting to feel a bit like Franz Kafka but then I remembered I had writer's block.

"What do you do for a living, Mr. Snow?" Shelby was asking. Roth took a quick glance into the dumper and came up with another sneer of disgust. There wasn't really anything ..wrong with the dumper except it was just about the size of a small pantry closet.

"I'm a novelist," I said.

"A novelist?" said Roth, making a little show of gazing around the place as if it were a large, luxurious apartment.

"Well," I said, "I haven't really written anything in almost seven years."

Shelby nodded his head sagely. "And why would that be, Mr. Snow?"

"I wish I knew the answer to that one," I said, with what was getting to be a practiced ruefulness. "I just don't seem to be able to write anymore."

"Shame," said Roth.

"Lot of talent gone to waste," offered Shelby with a strange smile.

"That's what my aunt Beatrice always told me," I said.

"She live in the city?" asked Shelby.

"No," I answered. "She's dead."

"Shame," said Roth.

I hadn't had much experience with cops, as I said, but it seemed to me that they were interviewing me as if I was not the law-abiding citizen I knew I was. I was racking my brains trying to figure out what they were doing here in the first place.

"Look, officers," I said after a long period of strained silence, "would you mind telling me what you want from me?"

"Oh, I think you probably do know the answer to that one," said Shelby. He was chuckling again but I could see that it was just kind of an ingrained habit, like a nervous tic or something. He wasn't really getting much amusement out of the situation. Of course, neither was I.

"Still can't guess?" said Roth, like a facetious, rather cynical game-show host.

Alarm bells were now going off somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind. Somewhere in there as well was probably a full-length novel yet to be written. But I didn't have the novel and I didn't have the answer. I tried to think of anything I'd done recently that had been unusual or out of character for me. Suddenly, it hit me. I've never been much of a poker player and I guess the cops could tell.

"That's right," nodded Shelby. "It's the bank, stupid."

"The bank?" I said. But I knew he was right. It was the bank. It was the safe-deposit box. It was helping Clyde stash her grandmother's silverware. I'd wondered about what was in the parcel at the time but was too shy or too weak or too stupid to make her unwrap it. Now two cops were crowding me out of my basement apartment. I lit a cigarette. I offered the pack to the cops but they declined.

I walked a few steps to the kitchen area and poured myself a cup of coffee with a slightly shaky hand. I offered the two cops some coffee. They declined again with an almost fatalistic patience that I found rather unnerving.

"Why'd you do it?" asked Roth.

"I was just trying to help that woman named Clyde. I didn't know what was in the package. I thought it was her grandmother's silverware."

"Her grandmother's silverware?" said Roth incredulously.

"A woman named Clyde?" said Shelby.

"What's her last name?" asked Roth.

"Potts. But I—"

"Have you talked to her since you-ah-helped her in the bank?" asked Shelby.

"I tried to call her last week but the number she gave me has been disconnected."

"Shame," said Roth.

I killed the cigarette and went over slowly to pour another cup of coffee. I tried to think. What in the hell was going on here?

"Look, guys," I said finally, "why won't you tell me what's happening? Who's Clyde? What did you find in my safe-deposit box?"

"We didn't find anything," said Shelby. "The bank found something and it wasn't her grandmother's silverware. First, of course, they had to get a court order and then they had to drill the box open. You won't be banking there anymore but I'm sure they'll be getting in touch with you. They could've filed criminal charges but since this broad has done this before in other banks with other marks like yourself, they'll probably let you off. Same reason we're not going to haul you in today for criminal mischief and maybe a felony or two if we wanted to try real hard."

"In other words," said Roth, apparently observing my total lack of understanding as to what had occurred, "you've been duped, Mr. Snow. But don't feel too bad about it. There's a sucker born every minute, and here in New York it's a regular population explosion. People like this Clyde woman eat people like you for breakfast every morning, and by lunchtime, they're hungry again. Fortunately, there's plenty of suckers like you around. I doubt if she'll bother with you again though. If she does get in touch, of course, you will call us?"

"Of course," I said.

The cops were making moves to leave by now and I was truly beginning to feel like the idiot they thought I was. They'd put me through the Chinese water torture and I still didn't know what Clyde had conned me into. I knew what I'd been. A sucker. I just didn't know how or why. That's enough to make even a sucker mad.

"Wait a minute!" I said with some intensity. "You can't leave without telling me what it was that the bank found in my safe-deposit box. What was it? Drugs? Stolen money?"

"Worse," said Roth. "A dead fish."

Many hours later, sometime after midnight in fact, I was lying half awake in bed imagining a scene in a novel about two police detectives interrogating a man in a basement apartment. The cops were ruthless and persistent. The man didn't have the vaguest notion what they wanted him for. The walls were closing in on the man. Then the phone rang.

The scene disappeared somewhere in my head but the phone was still ringing. The alarm clock read 12:55. I got out of bed, walked over to my desk, and picked up the phone.

"Hello, Sunshine."

"Clyde?"

"The one and only. Sorry I haven't called you. Do you want to have lunch with me tomorrow at the Blue Mill? Tomorrow's my birthday."

"Happy birthday, Clyde."

"Thanks, honey."

"Clyde, why'd you do it?"

"Do what?"

"Why'd you put the dead fish in my safe-deposit box?"

There was a silence on the line. It wasn't really a silence because I could hear the noise of the street all around her, and she stood in my mind like a beautiful spiritual tramp at a pay phone somewhere with cars and laughter and street orators, headlights and sirens all around her. In my imagination, she was the most seductive siren of them all. She'd make a great character in a novel, I thought. I'm not going to tell the cops she called, I thought.

"Okay. I'll tell you why I did it if you promise not to be mad, sunshine."

"All right. I promise."

"I did it just for the halibut," she said.

After she'd hung up, I went back to bed and, for the first time in what seemed like a thousand years, I think I went to sleep with a smile on my face.

three

"So, what do you know, Walter Snow?" she said, making it rhyme, leaning back in the booth. We were at the Blue Mill on Barrow Street and the lunch crowd seemed pretty light. It looked like it might be a fairly intimate birthday party.

"You look great, Clyde," I said. "But you sure don't look like the girl I met at the bank."

"Of course not, honey. I lost the wig, lost the Holly Golightly sunglasses, and even lost the beauty mark on my cheek. Remember?"

"Oh, I remember. I bet the security cameras at the bank remember, too."

"Well, you know how it is. A girl can't be too careful these days."

"I'll never tell the cops," I said. "You can count on me."

"I do, Sunshine."

It was incredible how fast I was becoming accustomed to the new Clyde. Or maybe it was the old Clyde. Anyway, the eyes still had it. They shone with an animal-like sense of excitement and a childlike spirit of mischief. If I had known better, I'd have said they were pulling me into her world. And she somehow looked smaller and more feminine now. Blond hair cut short with punkish pink highlights. That same indecipherable, seductively crooked smile. It was enough to make me want to follow her gorgeous ass into battle as if she were some jaded Joan of Arc. It was almost enough to make me want to write.

"The fish was fun, though, wasn't it?" she said. "You
knew
it wasn't my grandmother's heirloom silverware, didn't you?"

"Sort of," I said. "Maybe I was just mesmerized by your beauty mark. I kind of miss it."

"Don't worry. I'm liable to bring it back at any time. I wonder where Fox is. He's supposed to be baking and bringing my birthday cake."

"Your friend Fox knows how to bake a birthday cake?"

"He's a man of many talents," said Clyde. "While we're waiting, what do you say to a little after-dinner drink?"

"Fine. What would you like?"

"Tequila," said Clyde. "In fact,
tres
tequilas."

"
Tres
tequilas?"

"That's right, Sunshine. Guaranteed to keep away the blues at birthday time!"

Three tequilas in the middle of the afternoon was not a policy usually prescribed by the people who frequently attended AA meetings. If those kind of people ever downed three tequilas, they might well wind up doing something really crazy. Like putting a dead fish in a bank vault. I signaled the waiter and explained the order, which was now six tequilas because after some thought I decided I wasn't going to let Clyde drink alone on her birthday. As the waiter walked away, I saw Clyde studying me. It was a surprisingly pleasant sensation.

"This may be a rude question," she said, "but what is it you do when you're not busy playing Sir Lancelot coming to the aid of dangerous, deceiving women whom you think are damsels in distress?"

"That's not a rude question," I said, "just a hard one."

"Let me see if I can guess the answer. All I really know about you is that you're a good sport, you have a trusting nature, and you're a gentle, kind spirit who wouldn't let a girl celebrate her birthday all by herself. How's that for a start?"

"I'm starting to like myself already."

The waiter came to the table with a tray upon which sat six healthy shots of tequila along with a saucer of salt and some slices of lime. The Blue Mill was a fairly quiet, sedate kind of upon observing six drinks being delivered to a party of two. I told the waiter to put the meals and the drinks on one check and to keep the tab open.

"I forgot to mention 'big spender,'" said Clyde, smiling approvingly. "You sure I can't help you foot the bill?"

"On your birthday? Not a chance."

"So you're not an accountant," said Clyde. "You're too easy with your money and you haven't even mentioned the receipt."

"Right."

"You're not a doctor or a lawyer or a shrink. You don't dress the part, and besides, you're too loose and easy with your time. I doubt if any of them would have
tres
tequilas in the middle of a workday. Of course, you never know."

"No. You're right. I'm none of the above."

"Let's drink to none of the above," said Clyde, lifting her glass.

And we did.

"All right," said Clyde. "I'd like to keep guessing what you're not and maybe what you are. Is the game getting boring?"

"Nothing about you could ever be boring."

"Oh, God! Don't tell me you're a professional escort! A gigolo! No, I've got it! A male prostitute! No, that can't be. You wouldn't be picking up the tab."

"You're right."

"Besides, you're not
that
charming. Just kidding. Well, let's see. What's left? You're not a teacher. You couldn't afford the drinks."

"Right."

"And speaking of drinks, how about another round? Where the hell's my birthday cake? I knew I shouldn't have trusted Fox. Birthdays can be such a drag anyway and then to have a birthday party and no cake—”

"This is the best birthday party I've ever been to in my life," I said truthfully.

"Sure
you're not a professional escort?"

"Well," she said, lifting a second tequila high in the air, "here's to amateurs."

We drank the second shot of tequila. By this time, I wasn't sure if it was the tequila or simply being with Clyde that was creating the current state of near happiness that I was feeling. I found myself hoping that her friend Fox would be a no-show.

"You're not self-absorbed enough to be a college professor. Your hands are too soft and clean to be a punch-press operator. You're too sweet to be a cop. Too smart to be a drug dealer. Too innocent to be a reporter. And we know you're not a banker or you never would've let me use your safe-deposit box in the first place and—we wouldn't be here together now."

"Right on all counts. I'm again none of the above."

Clyde folded her hands and rested her chin on her fingers. She looked past my eyes into my dreams.

"What manner of man are you, Sunshine?" she asked, her demeanor suddenly transformed to that of a curious, highly intelligent child.

She was a woman. She was a con artist. She was a chameleon. And what manner of man was I? That might have been an even harder question. For it's easy to lie to yourself, but it's not so easy to lie to a child. And now, for all the world, she looked at me with the eyes of a child.

"I'm a writer," I said. "But I don't write. I mean, I used to write but that was years ago. If I was writing now, I'd be writing a novel. I'm a novelist, I suppose. I write fiction."

"My life is a work of fiction," she said. "I love fiction. It's always so true."

I looked up and the child was gone. In her place there was a beautiful woman. She was holding a glass and making a toast.

"Here's to the big new best-seller by Walter Snow!" she said.

"I'll drink to that," I said.

"You'll write it, too," said Clyde.

What happened next is a little difficult to remember.
Tres
tequilas will do that to you. And we didn't stop at three. Fox Harris came whirling into the place with an entrance quite theatrical, carrying a large cardboard box very delicately, dressed in a flowing blue robe, and strutting past the stares, both cold and curious, of the assembled patrons like a proud and handsome king, which in many ways he was. Or maybe I should say queen. I wasn't sure then and I'm not entirely certain now. I'm not even sure that it makes any difference.

As Fox approached our table, with his long, unkempt locks of hair flowing in every possible direction, he began singing quite loudly to the bemusement or studied indifference of the other customers and to the perfect joy of Clyde.

" 'MacArthur's Park is melting in the dark, all that sweet green icing oozing down,'" he paraphrased as he discarded the box on the floor, revealing a beautiful chocolate cake that he danced around displaying to the patrons, many of whom appeared as if they'd been hit by a hammer. Now he sang louder and more emotionally, playing to his audience like a torch singer.

"Someone left the cake out in the rain,

I don't know if I can make it,

It took so long to bake it,

And I'll never have that recipe again!''

He came over to our table then, placed the cake precariously atop a small platform of the six empty tequila glasses, and gave Clyde a long hug, which at moments seemed brotherly, at others seemed motherly, and still at others seemed loverly. I was mildly surprised to notice a small but definite streak of jealousy manifesting itself in my heart. I hardly knew these people, I recall thinking at the time. I realize now, of course, that I hardly knew myself.

"Welcome to the caravan, Walter," he said at last, winking broadly at Clyde. "I've heard a lot about you."

He extended a firm hand from somewhere within the bountiful folds of his royal blue robe. I shook hands with the man Clyde had called the king of the Gypsies and, indeed, his eyes seemed to sparkle with life and love and destiny like the slow-moving spokes of a Gypsy wagon. He gazed down at the table and his face suddenly registered great shock.

"Don't tell me," he shouted, "that you both have had
tres
tequilas without me!"

"You were late, Fox," said Clyde. "You're always late."

"That's an occupational hazard," he said, "of a homeless man without subway fare. Thank God Walter's here. Bartender! Nine more tequilas! What do you two think of the cake?"

"Looks yummy," said Clyde.

"Baked it myself. German chocolate. Do you know the recipe, Walter, for German chocolate cake?"

"I'm afraid I don't," I said.

"Well, the first step is, you occupy the kitchen."

This drew a mild guffaw from the large, rather portly waiter who proceeded to deposit nine more tequilas on the table. Clyde, Fox, and I proceeded to kill the first round and I thought for a while that I could actually keep up with them. Clyde clearly could drink like a fish, and I don't mean the one that smelled up the bank. Fox's basic demeanor was so ebullient and mercurial it had been hard to tell if he was drunk or sober from the moment he'd walked into the place. Maybe he was dead drunk. Maybe he merely seemed to appear increasingly more dignified. Maybe, as Fox contended later, there was very little difference between those two states of human behavior.

By the fifth round of tequila, I was having a little trouble focusing my eyes but I could make out Fox Harris jumping around like a spinning ghost and striking a kitchen match on his jeans.

"Make a wish," he shouted, lighting the single huge candle on the cake, which he later confided he'd stolen from the Church of the Latter Day Felcher. Clyde closed her eyes, and with a particularly dreamy expression on her face, made a wish.

"What'd you wish for?" asked Fox.

"I'm not telling," said Clyde. "Anyway, it's not about you. It's about Walter."

"Then it's about me, too," Fox persisted, raising his voice in righteous passion. "We're all part of one big soul! It's one for all! All for one!"

"That's true," Clyde said wistfully. "But I was wishing for something that only Walter can do."

"Write the bloody novel?" I asked.

"You'll write the novel when you're ready to write the novel," she said. "I'm wishing for something even more important. Maybe I'll tell you someday."

"I'll tell you one thing," said Fox. "You better blow that fucking candle out before the whole cake turns into a wax museum."

Clyde puckered her lips very suggestively, I thought, and smoothly blew out the candle to a loud cheer from Fox and light applause from myself and the waiter, who appeared to be standing by nervously with the check. I gave him my credit card and he walked away just as Fox pulled out what appeared to be a hunting knife from the medieval-looking scabbard hooked on his braided belt. He was moving to cut the cake when Clyde leaped up to stop him.

"Put that dirty, ugly thing away," she said. "This is a no-hands birthday cake. You can't touch it with your hands or a knife or a fork—only your mouth."

"Can we use your grandmother's heirloom silverware?" I asked.

"The boy's good," said Fox.

"Only your
mouth,"
said Clyde.

As monstered on tequila as I was at the time, as blurry as everything else seems in retrospect, what occurred in the next few minutes remains indelibly and finely etched in my memory. Clyde was the first to take a bite out of the cake. Then Fox took a large mouthful. Then, incredibly, I began eating the large chocolate birthday cake with only my mouth, to the horror of the remaining diners at the placid, traditional old Blue Mill. Soon all three of us were devouring Fox Harris's culinaiy masterpiece like a pack of hyenas. The chocolate cake was all over our faces, the waiter was standing by stoically, and the two bartenders were conferring darkly behind the bar.

It was at this point that Fox began putting cake in Clyde's hair. Clyde responded by putting cake in Fox's hair, though with Fox's hair it was not that noticeable. Then they both began putting cake in my hair, as well as licking some of the chocolate icing off each other's faces. Then Clyde came over closer to me and set about seductively licking my face. Then, as the waiter finally brought the credit-card receipt for me to sign, I became vaguely aware that my forward progress was being impeded by the unnatural act of Fox Harris licking my reading glasses.

At this juncture, a no-nonsense management type dressed in a conservative suit walked briskly across the room to put an end to the insanity. That this did not occur immediately is probably a tribute to Clyde's inherent ability to charm any snake in the universe, particularly the two-legged male variety. She turned to face the manager just as he approached the table and with great dignity brushed back a bit of cake-ravaged hair, looked into his eyes, smiled shyly, and stuck out her hand as if he'd asked her to dance.

In the twinkle of an eye, they formed a tableau of two old smoothy sweethearts on the dance floor. Fox was suddenly beside them clapping his hands in waltz time and crooning along encouragingly.

" 'Two drifters,'" sang Fox," 'off to see the world. There's such a lot of world to see. We're after the same rainbow's end—'"