Strange Trades (31 page)

At that moment Thurman began to cough. Not a polite, out-in-public cough either, but one of his regularly occurring TB-victim-in-the-isolation-ward, lung-ripping, throat-searing gaspers. Clutching a sheaf of napkins for the expected expectoration, he tried to turn his body toward the window, away from the other customers. His knee jerked involuntarily, bumping the small table and sending his pill vials tumbling to the floor.

In the midst of his agony, Thurman felt waves of searing humiliation.

Nothing could make his embarrassment any worse.

Nothing?

A soft yet strong hand descended on his shoulder, followed by a familiar voice.

“Are you all right? What can we do?”

Oh, Sweet Mary!

It was her!

Thurman struggled to get his body under control. He finished gagging into the napkin wad, then instinctively stuck the filthy mass of tissue (paper) and tissue (cellular) into the pocket of his sweatpants. Trying to compose his mottled features into a semblance of normality, Thurman turned to face a standing Shenda Moore.

A sweet floral scent wafted off her. She clutched half a bite-rimmed sandwich unselfconsciously in one hand. Her exquisitely planed Afro-Caribbean face, framed in lax layered Fibonacci curves of thick hair, was a blend of alarm and curiosity, her taut body poised for whatever action might prove necessary.

Weakly, Thurman found a joke. “I—there was a fly in my coffee.”

Shenda laughed. The sound was like temple bells. In a bold tone she completed the old joke: “Well, don’t spread the word around, or everyone will want one!”

Then, just when Thurman expected the Karuna’s proprietor to turn and walk off, she pulled up a chair and sat down beside him. Now she spoke in more confidential tones, and the watchers attracted by Thurman’s discomfort turned back to their own business.

“Do you mind if I finish my lunch here?”

“No, never! I mean, sure, why not? It’s your place.”

This hardly sounded the note of gracious invitation Thurman intended. But Shenda seemed not to take offense. She waved over Nello.

“Nello, I’ll have a Mango-Cherry, please. And—what’s your name?”

This information was not immediately retrievable. After a dedicated search, however, involving all his processing power, a few syllables surfaced. “Thurman. Thurman Swan.”

“Get Mister Swan whatever he wants.”

Thurman had never tried any of the many Tantra-brand juices available at the Karuna. “Um, I’ll have the same.”

Nello left. Shenda took a bite out of her sandwich, meditatively studied Thurman while she chewed. Their juices arrived. Shenda uncapped hers and drank straight from the bottle, her lovely throat pulsing. Thurman took a tentative sip, cautious as always when introducing new acquaintances to his hermit stomach. Not bad.

Shenda finished her sandwich with deliberation and obvious enjoyment, washing it down with the rest of the sweet juice. She set the empty bottle decisively down. Still, she said nothing. Thurman was dying.

But when she finally spoke, he almost wished she hadn’t.

“What’s wrong with you?”

Of course. She wouldn’t have been human if she hadn’t zeroed in on his obvious sickly condition. Still, Hunchback Thurman had hoped the pretty gypsy girl could have avoided the touchy subject.

He wearily started to recount his sad and baffling tale with its lack of a clear conclusion or moral.

“Well, you see, I was in the Gulf War—”

Shenda impatiently waved his words away. “I don’t care about that shit! That’s old shit, kiddo! I assume you got a doctor for whatever happened to you there. Maybe not the best doctor or the best kind of treatment. That’s something you gotta look into some more maybe. But what I want to know is, what’s wrong with you?”

His mouth hanging open, Thurman couldn’t answer.

Shenda leaned closer, drilling him with her unwavering gaze. “Look. I see you in here every day of the week, any hour I come in. Now, I certainly don’t bitch about anybody taking up space without spending a lot. Hell, that’s one of the things this place is for! And I’m flattered that you find this joint so attractive. But no one should be so desperate or lonely or unimaginative that they’ve only got one place to go! I mean, like Groucho said, ‘I love my cigar, but even I take it out of my mouth sometimes!’”

Thurman struggled to recover himself. “Well sure, I agree, if you were talking about a normal person—”

Shenda banged her hand flat down on the table, raising a gunshot report. “Where’s your tail? You got a tail? Show me your tail! Or maybe you’re hiding a third eye somewhere?”

Shenda pressed a finger into his brow.

“Ouch!”

“No, I didn’t think so. Thurman, you are normal. Maybe a struggling kind of normal, but who isn’t? No, you’ve let your spirit get a kink in it, Thurman. You’ve been dealt a lousy hand, but you’re still supposed to play it. Instead, you’re down a well of apathy without a bucket to piss in! You need to get out and around, my friend.”

The word “friend” was like a life raft. “I—what could I do?”

“How about a job?”

“A job? What kind of job could I possibly handle?”

“There’s a job for everyone. Wait right here.”

Shenda got up and walked to the counter, where she retrieved her bag. She strode briskly back, dropped down, and removed her appointment book from within the satchel. A single business card shot out under its own volition onto the tabletop. Shenda picked it up and read it.

“Perfect! Go to this address today. This very afternoon, do you hear me? Tell Vance I sent you and said for him to put you to work.”

Shenda stood then, extended her hand. “Welcome to the Karuna family, Thurman.”

Thurman found himself standing somehow without reliance on his cane. He took Shenda’s hand. Her grip was a pleasant pain.

When she was halfway across the room, Thurman impulsively called out, “Shenda Moore!”

She stopped and whirled. “Yes!”

“I like your toenails!”

Shenda eyed Thurman with new interest. Coyly angling one foot like a model, she said, “Me too!”

And then she was out of the Koffeehouse, force of nature dissolving in a burst of laffs.

Thurman sank back down gratefully into his seat, feeling his face flushing. He was
almost
glad she was gone.

Now that he had gotten some small fraction of his crazy wish fulfilled, however unpredictably, he wasn’t sure how much of Shenda Moore’s intense company he could take!

Someone else was now standing by his table.

Fuquan Fletcher was smiling. But the smile was not pleasant, nor meant to be.

“Big man. Likes the lady’s
toenails
! Gonna let the world know it!”

“Fuquan, what’s your problem?”

“You my problem, man, you try to move in on Shenda Moore. That girl is mine! She got her nose open for me!”

“Is that so? You sure she feels that way?”

“Sure? I’ll show you sure, man!” The irate coffee roaster jabbed a finger into Thurman’s chest.

This was the second time Thurman had been poked in the space of a few minutes. Unlike the first educational prodding, this poke made him mad. So—after he did not respond with immediate belligerence, causing Fuquan to laugh coarsely and turn to leave—Thurman felt completely justified in using his cane to hook one of the Black man’s ankles and pull his foot out from under him, sending him crashing to the floor.

Fuquan was up and heading with bunched fists for a risen shaky Thurman when Buddy and Nello and Verity intervened, referee baristas holding the opponents apart.

“Hey, c’mon, guys, who started this?”

Neither antagonist said anything. After a tense moment, Fuquan brushed himself off and stalked into the back.

Gathering up his pills and accoutrements, feeling that his life was becoming more interesting by the second, Thurman departed the Karuna.

Outside, he studied the business card.

KUSTOM KARS AND KANVASES

VANCE VON JOLLY, ARTIST IN RESIDENCE

“HOUSE OF THE WINGED HEART”

1616 ROTHFINK BOULEVARD

Thurman checked his wallet. Not a lot of green. But hey—he had a job now!

In the cab, Thurman speculated on what he would find at the end of the ride.

Disembarking, he discovered the wan products of his imagination to be a pale shadow of reality.

He stood facing an old garage: four cinderblock bays flanked by an office space. The entire nondescript structure, however, had been studded with brightly colored glazed ceramic objects in
bas-relief
, executed in a zippy cartoon style. Animals, trees, people, cars, toys, musical notes.

Above the office door was the biggest piece of pottery, big as a sofa: an anatomically correct heart sprouting white-feathered angel wings.

Thurman entered the cluttered office. No one home. He moved into the bays.

The first three were occupied by exotic cars: hotrods in various stages of being gaudily decorated. The last bay was filled with easels and wall-leaning stacks of canvases, also in various stages of completion. The paintings exhibited the same daffy sensibility as the outdoor ceramics. A beat-up workbench held brushes, tubes of color, tins of thinner and crusty rags. A tatty couch with mussed blankets, a metal-topped kitchen table and a small refrigerator seemed to hint at regular overnight human occupancy.

A toilet flushed. Through an opening door—whose frosted glass bore the calligraphic legend inspiration: ten cents—walked a very pale muscular man with a trendy arrangement of dark facial hair offset by a thinning on top. One earlobe, his left, was studded with segments of a severed silver snake, like the colonial DONT TREAD ON ME. He was concentrating on tucking his paint-splattered green mechanic’s shirt into his Swiss Army-surplus wool pants, and so did not immediately notice Thurman. Lacking sleeves, his abbreviated shirt revealed several tattoos, including a winged heart.

“Er, Vance?”

The guy stopped and looked up with neither welcome nor discouragement. “Who’re you?”

Thurman, growing more and more doubtful, volunteered his name. Then: “I was sent by Shenda Moore. She said you’d have a regular job for me…?”

“You know kandy-flake? Or striping? I could use some help striping. How about bodywork? Can you do bodywork?”

“Well, I’m good with tools, and I picked up a lot of special skills in the Army.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

“Well, basically I was a demolition expert. But I can learn new things quick.”

Vance von Jolly had gotten his shirt stuck in the zipper of his pants, and was now struggling mightily to restore his apparel to its proper functioning. Thurman wondered if he should offer to help.

“Jesus! That Shenda! She drives me nuts! All right, I suppose you can start by washing brushes. Any thumb-fingered idiot can wash brushes.”

Thurman was hurt. “Wait just a minute now—”

“Oh, did I mention I can’t work with anyone who gets pissed off at my dumb mouth?”

“No. Unless that was the warning just now.”

Unable to free his shirt from the toothy tangle, Vance ceased struggling and moved to the workbench. Buttoning his waistband, he found an alligator clip and pinched shut the upper open portion of his fly. The clip projected outward like a small groin antenna.

“It was. Okay, let’s start by showing you where everything is.”

Thurman had one question. “Vance—will I be working with a lot of chemicals? I’ve had some bad luck with chemicals in the past.”

Vance seemed to see Thurman and his condition for the first time. He shook his head ruefully. “Man, someone really fucked you up, didn’t they?”

“I guess you could say that.”

The painter moved to Thurman’s side, hanging an arm over his shoulder. A complex odor of sweat, garlic and solvents wafted off the man.

“Thurman, my pal, I want to let you in on a little secret. The Army made you handle the chemicals of
death
! But here we work with the chemicals of
life
!”

“What’s the difference? Chemicals are chemicals, aren’t they?”

Vance von Jolly merely tapped a finger against his head and winked.

8.

“Let the Dogs Vote!”

Sun like a fusion-powered pomegranate in a pristine blueberry sky. Whipped cream clouds. Breezes holding kites and balloons aloft and trying to tug high women’s skirts and slither up men’s pants legs. Acres of open lawn green as celery, with shaded patches the color of new money. Shouts and squeals of running playing wild children. Over-the-top, can’t-stand-myself canine pack yelping. Bee-buzz adult chatter: gossip, business, philosophy and seduction. Teenage odd-stressed argot in the perpetual search for cool. Pointillistic laughter. Competing music from half a dozen boomboxes, holding the sonic fort until the Beagle Boys finished their cable-laying, equipment-stacking preparations underway ’neath a Sgt. Pepper bandstand. Smell of mesquite burning down to perfect grilling coals, and aromatic dope leaves combusting.