Kill Two Birds & Get Stoned (7 page)

"I'm going to try to walk him out of here," said Fox quietly, still perusing his clipboard. "If you two will help facilitate Teddy's departure, I'll attempt to stall the powers that be."

It looked for a moment like it might work. Then Teddy, who'd been standing placidly by, on Fox's left side, suddenly sprang to life.

"DEY FOUND ME IN THE CONGO!" he shouted at the top of his lungs. "BEATIN' ON MY BONGO!"

"Relax, Teddy," said Fox. "Just take a few deep breaths."

Fox had placed the stethoscope somewhere along the circumference of Teddy's huge stomach and was listening intently when a hospital administrator walked up. "You can tell a hospital administrator," Fox had confided in me later, "because they always wear a suit and tie and a constipated expression." This one certainly fit the bill. He spoke directly to Fox, ignoring the rest of us.

"What's going on here, Dr.—uh-?"

"Feintush," said Fox brightly. "Dr. Irving Feintush."

"I AM THE KING OF THE ZULU NATION!" shouted Teddy so loudly that even a nearby exiting fireman jumped.

"I'm taking him," said Fox, "for an EKG, an ERG, and a PBP, and, of course, the rather ubiquitous Rorschach test."

"This man shouldn't even be in the lobby," said the administrator.

By this time, things were spinning rapidly out of control. Teddy was chanting a highly realistic-sounding Zulu war chant and Fox was positioning himself between the administrator and the front door. Suddenly, Fox flung away his charts and grabbed the stunned administrator in a powerful bear hug, lifting him off the ground, and thereby at least temporarily deactivating him.

"Run, children, run!" shouted Fox.

And run we did.

Out the front doors and down the steps and down the sidewalk with Teddy in the lead, running with the speed and intensity of a stampeding black rhino, also an endangered species, along the green veldt. In an odd way, it was a beautiful thing to see. A man that large, running with the determination and grace of an arrow aimed at the heart of freedom. I was winded by the time I caught up with him and got him safely in the backseat of the cab. I gave the driver forty bucks.

"Where I take him?" asked the driver.

"Anyplace," I said. "The Statue of Liberty."

As the cab pulled away, I saw a big, peaceful smile on Teddy's face. He stuck his big head out the window and looked back at me.

"Thank you, human being," he said.

I watched the taxi speed away. Then I looked around for Clyde but she was nowhere in sight.

ten

Some women look even more beautiful when they cry. Clyde was one of those. After I'd gotten Teddy safely shoehorned into the backseat of the cab, I hadn't been able to find Clyde anywhere. Against my better judgment, I'd crept back to the now-crowded steps of the hospital and, as casually as possible, tried to peer inside the lobby. The cops were swarming by this time and the focus of their activity appeared to be one Dr. Feintush, who was standing in the center of the lobby apparently trying to bullshit his way out of a situation that had clearly become unbullshittable.

I was well aware that somewhere in that lobby might well be the guy in scrubs who'd seen me in the hallway after I'd planted the smoke bomb. If he spotted me now it would be an easy matter for him to use his powers of deduction and to implicate me as well in the whole mess. But the knowledge that I was at risk was somehow overtaken by my desire to find Clyde and get her safely away from there. It didn't take long for me to spot her forlorn figure leaning against the inside of the glass doors, arms crossed resignedly in front of her, observing the spectacle.

I ran up the steps two at a time and rapped on the glass near her head. She did not respond. She stood like a frozen, tragic statue watching the noose tighten around Fox's neck. Finally, I yanked the door open and she practically fell into my arms. Without a word, like a small child, I escorted her down the steps, where moments later, from a safer vantage point, we watched the cops take Fox away with his hands handcuffed behind his back. He was still wearing the stethoscope, I noticed. It was the kind of detail that a good, observant author would be unlikely to miss.

Now Clyde and I were in a cab together heading downtown in the vague direction of Chinatown and Little Italy. I tried not to stare at her as our taxi hurtled down Broadway, toward Canal Street. Neither of us had yet to speak a word to the other, but that's how it always was with Clyde and me and, to a somewhat lesser degree, with me and Fox. There was an inherent understanding between us that never had to be articulated, that although we were cut from a very different cloth, the very fact of our being together said it all. Some of the most intimate, soul-to-soul communication of my life occurred with Clyde and it always seemed to be at moments when not a word was spoken. That being as it may, I now felt I had to break the silence.

"There was nothing we could do," I said. "I had to get you out of there."

Clyde did not respond. She'd stopped crying but now she seemed to be gazing wistfully out the window at something apparently only she could see. "Windows," Fox had said.

"Where do you want to go?" I asked. "Down to the police station?"

Clyde looked at me quizzically. There were no signs of tears in her eyes.

"No point going to the cop shop now," she said. "Fox has been there before and he knows what to do. He's been taken away in bracelets many times. Been in and out many times. In and out of places. And people."

"Are you one of them?" I asked. Clyde ignored my question.

"We have only one decision to make," she said.

"What's the decision?"

"Where are we going for lunch?"

If the truth be told, I was beginning to feel in pretty good spirits and I knew the reason: the prospect of being alone with

Clyde without having Fox Harris anywhere in the vicinity. There was a twinge of nagging guilt, however. Fox was definitely a person of the moment, and not unlike Teddy or the Masai warriors, any amount of incarceration he incurred would, no doubt, be exceedingly difficult for him. I put these thoughts out of my mind, nonetheless, and decided I'd concentrate on Clyde. If she could deal so stoically with Fox's current predicament, so could I.

We got out of the cab on Canal Street, right where Little Italy meets Chinatown, if the two disparate cultures could ever be said to truly meet. I don't know how cultures or even people ever meet in this busy world. Everyone seems so into his or her self, and the human soul, of course, will remain eternally unknowable. Singles bars are just not going to get it done. Sometimes, though, you meet a rather odd, charming person in, of all places, a bank, and you find yourself walking down Canal Street with her, holding her hand.

"Okay," I said. "Now we come to the decision that all New Yorkers must sooner or later come to grips with. Will it be beef chow fun or linguini with clams?"

"Neither," said Clyde. "I'm a vegetarian."

"Another thing I never knew about you," I said. "How long has this been going on behind my back?"

"Always," she said. "At least as long as I can remember. I've never believed in eating anything that has a face or anything that had a mother."

I looked at her again and it was almost like seeing her for the first time. What a strange and beautiful sentiment, I thought, from such a reckless, fun-loving person.

"Nothing with a face," I said, "and nothing with a mother. Maybe I'll try that myself sometime."

"You will when you're ready," she said. "And I think you're almost ready."

The truth was, I was almost ready to jump her beautiful, sensitive, vegetarian bones right there on the sidewalk. The truth was, I was thinking of becoming a vegetarian myself by having oral sex with a vegetarian named Clyde. I almost said something, but I didn't think it would go down very well, pardon the expression. I was actually quite pleased with that clever little turn of phrase and I took out the small notepad that I'd started to carry around with me. I scribbled some notes to myself rather furiously for a few moments while Clyde wandered off to engage in a conversation with a small Chinese boy carrying a little Italian flag. Maybe the cultures had begun to meet, I thought.

When Clyde came back, she looked almost somber. I put the notebook away and took both her hands in both of mine. Suddenly I was looking into the eyes of a stranger. Just when you think you're getting to know someone, they turn into somebody else.

"Don't write the book," she said.

I was totally floored. Somewhere in the back of my alcoholic memory, a dark thought flashed. I had spent so many years keeping my ideas to myself. Keeping so many pages to myself for so many years. Not speaking my thoughts to others. Not sharing life with others. I couldn't believe she was telling me this.

"I can't believe you're telling me this," I exclaimed. "You're the reason I'm writing the bloody book. You and Fox. Because of you, I have a story. A tale to tell. Characters. Real flesh-and-blood characters. And finally, after all this time, I have a desire to write. A
need
to write. My life was so empty and meaningless, I couldn't even have told this to anyone before. For God's sake, you're my fucking
muse!"

"That's sweet, Walter," she said. I was starting not to like it so much when she called me Walter. Like Van Gogh, I wanted Sunshine.

"It's not sweet," I said. "It's true. I wouldn't be writing the book if it weren't for you. First you encourage my writing and all of a sudden you tell me not to write. Make up your mind, Clyde. Which is it going to be?"

"Little Italy," she said.

We had a quiet lunch in Little Italy at a place called Luna's.

Clyde had some pasta and some minestrone soup. I had linguini with red clam sauce and meatballs, a bad start for my career as a vegetarian. I commented on it and Clyde responded, indirectly, as usual, yet somehow right to the point.

"If
you go ahead and write the book—”

"I am."

"—then I don't really mind your writing about the fact that I don't eat anything with a face or a mother. I just don't know about the other thing you're thinking of putting in there."

"What
other thing?"

"The bit you scribbled down while I was talking to the little boy with the flag. It's funny, I guess, in a crude sort of way, and it might even come true if you play your cards right, but don't you think eating a vegetarian is a little bit trite?"

Two things were suddenly in play here and, like any true novelist, I completely missed the second and far more important one, the one that wasn't about me. My work hadn't even been written yet and here it was already being criticized. And not just criticized, but being called the mother of all words that authors hate: "trite." Ho-hum, lackluster, predictable, pedestrian, all those we can deal with. But there's no author alive who doesn't bristle when he hears the word "trite." Any author worth his salt would far rather be accused of plagiarism.

"'Trite'?" I shouted.
"Trite?
What's trite about—"

And then the second, and far more obvious factor dawned upon my marinated brain cells. How could Clyde have known what I'd scribbled in my little notebook? She hadn't seen a word of it. Did she know me so well? Was I that much of an open book? Had she truly read my mind?

Suddenly, I felt a little dizzy and the room seemed a bit warm. What kind of girl was this? I wondered. What kind of person can actually read your mind, tell you what you jotted down to yourself on a little pad thirty minutes ago, and then go on eating her vegetarian minestrone soup as if nothing had happened? And now she was smiling.

"Don't be alarmed," she said. "It was just an educated guess."

"Bullshit. You couldn't have seen what I'd written. What is this? A magic act?"

"I suppose you could say that what you've written didn't go down too well."

I felt as if somebody had hit me with a hammer, but it didn't feel bad; it just felt strange. I retrieved my little novelist's notebook from the inside pocket of my coat. What was the point of keeping my notes to myself? I thought. I might as well wear them on my body like a sandwich board. For a few stunned moments, I carefully perused the words I had recently written.

"It says here 'go down
very
well,'" I said weakly. "Not 'go down
too
well.'"

"Nobody's perfect," she said.

"So just like that you read my mind? I can't believe it. It's got to be some kind of trick. But how in God's name did you learn to do it?"

"Nobody
learns
to do it," said Clyde. "It's just like telling fortunes. It's something I've been doing since I was very young. In fact, I was working in a carnival. That's how I first met Fox. Then the carnival left town."

"Where did this happen?"

Clyde took a cigarette out of my pack on the table. I lit it for her. She took a puff and seemed to just watch the smoke for a moment.

"I think," she said, "it was either in Chinatown or Little Italy."

The waiter came over and we ordered two double espressos, two cannolis, and some of those strawberries you can get in Little Italy that are covered with chocolate. There wasn't much conversation and that was good. I had some serious thinking to do, and since I couldn't know for sure if Clyde knew what I was thinking, I had to be very careful. It was strange, to say the least. But, I must admit, it was not entirely unpleasant. Indeed, there was a rather bizarre sense of excitement about it. It was a new sensation for me. Sharing my innermost thoughts with a friend. Or maybe it wasn't really happening at all. Maybe it was all in my mind.

Suddenly, Clyde clapped her hands together twice, like the CEO of some grand global corporation indicating that the meeting was adjourned. Whatever stray remnants of thoughts I'd had in my mind, I noticed, had also taken their little briefcases and left the conference room.

"Okay, team," she said. "Here's what we're going to do. You're going down to the courthouse and help facilitate Fox's timely release from the calaboose. I really don't want him to stay in there too long this time. It's starting to have a deleterious effect upon his personality. I'd say bailing him out would be the easiest."

"What if I can't afford his bail?"

"Spring him. Like we did Teddy. I trust your judgment, Walter. You have a really well-grounded sense of judgment. You'll know what to do."

"And will you help me?"

"That's impossible. For one thing, I have a rather severe allergy to cops. For another, I've got to get to work wreaking revenge upon the person who got Teddy locked up in the nuthouse."

"And whom would that person be?" I asked somewhat cautiously.

"Donald Trump," she said.

There are many weird and arcane strains of logic in this vast and troubled land. But from none of these that made any sense, or so it seemed to me, did Clyde's comments appear to come. Possibly, I thought, I was just too rational, too pragmatic, too
Walter,
to see the light of her peculiar truth.

"Now what in the world," I asked, not unreasonably, "has Donald Trump got to do with this?"

"Trump owns Trump Towers. It was his property and his people who had Teddy arrested and put away in the nuthouse. I'm going to teach Trump that he'd better learn to forgive those who trespass against him. Besides, I never much liked people who always put their names all over buildings. And I don't like the buildings. And there's just a bunch of Gucci crap that nobody can really afford and nobody really needs inside those buildings and it makes everybody who visits here believe that all this capitalistic detritus is what America's all about and they're the only ones who buy it anyway because they want to be how they think we are and it's all Donald Trump's fault."

"Can't argue with that," I said. I wasn't exactly sure what she'd said but it had sounded pretty convincing.

"Don't look so worried, Sunshine," she said brightly. "I'll take care of Trump and you look after Fox. It's as simple as that. The courthouse is only a few blocks from here, you know."

"But I've never bailed anybody out before."

"Good. It'll be on-the-job training. By the way, I thought you were wonderful today. The diversion worked perfectly. Then you got Teddy on his way safely. Then you even came back and got me. And I'm glad that you did. I'm very, very proud of you, Sunshine. If I still believed in heroes, I swear, you'd be mine."

"I'm nobody's hero," I said. "I'm just trying to figure out what I'm doing and why I'm doing what I'm doing. I mean, these little hobbies of yours and Fox's seem to be becoming increasingly dangerous. The risk involved this morning, as we've already seen, proved to be extremely dangerous."