“Teabag,” said Mira.
“Lewis,” I said. “Is it going to be a novel?”
“No, I’m done with fiction. I said what I wanted to say. I said it the way I wanted to say it. Nobody will understand what I did until I’m dead.”
“So fucking die!”
The Colette Man stood, dropped his cigarillo in his demitasse, stalked out.
“What’s that all about?” said Bob.
“That’s Craig,” said Mira. “He owns the place.”
“What a hard-on,” said Bob. “It’s not like I’m going to apologize for my talent.”
“Hey,” I said, “I’ve been writing some stuff myself.”
“That’s wonderful,” said Bob. “I’m immensely thrilled for you. Do you have any cash I can borrow?”
“No, I’m sorry. But, anyway, what I’ve been writing is—”
“No money at all?”
“Sorry, I’m tapped.”
“Liar. Hack. What time should I pick you up?”
“For what?” I said.
“I was talking to the chick.”
“Come by at five,” said Mira.
Bob left and I leaned over the counter.
“You’re dating that joker?”
“Just fooling around,” said Mira. “He came in here one day and we got to talking. He makes me laugh.”
“He does?”
“Well, maybe not laugh. Anyway, you were kissing his ass.”
“I was just being friendly,” I said.
“Friendly to his ass,” said Mira.
MAYBE IT WAS my duty to warn Gary about how Bob Price was setting nookie traps all about town, but I had more pressing business with the Captain. I bought an iced coffee to go, got going. The ice would be melted by the time I reached the Retractor Pad, but it was the thought that counted. The thought that I’d been nice enough to buy Gary an iced coffee was part of a larger notion I meant to plant in his mind: that he should maybe float me more cash. Gary’s handouts weren’t lasting. It was time to discuss a long-term loan. I had some phone bills, a letter from the IRS folded in my pocket to prove I had documents pertaining to my finances. I figured I’d show them to Gary, use the word “finances.” This would make the loan official. Then I wouldn’t feel so bad when I defaulted. It would be like screwing a bank, or a credit card company, not your best friend.
Clara, Gary’s mother, answered the door at the Retractor Pad.
“Lewis,” she said. “What a nice surprise.”
Gary and his father, Ben, a balder, bonier Gary, stood together in the kitchen.
“Hey,” said Gary.
His voice was hoarse and he heeded his father as he spoke.
“Everybody okay?” I said.
“Beautiful,” said Gary’s father, softly. “Everybody’s beautiful.”
It was pretty awkward, Catamounts. I was definitely the fourth wheel on the tricycle of family reconciliation. These kinds of deep encounters are better viewed from a distance. That’s why there’s daytime TV.
“I’ve got iced coffee,” I said. “I think the ice might have melted.”
Clara took the soggy cup, poured the coffee off into a mug.
“Here you go, Gary, honey,” she said.
“Thanks, Mom.”
Clara smiled and Gary lunged at her, wrapped himself around her waist, curled up to her blue-jeaned belly.
“I’m so sorry, Mommy.”
Coffee slopped to the floor.
“There, there, baby,” said Gary’s mother. “Everything’s going to fine. We’re going to be a family again.”
Now Ben began sobbing, honked, bobbed, a spit-laden horn.
“Ben, please, no more,” said Clara.
Ben closed his eyes, heaved. Clara unhitched Gary, shoved him gently against the stove. She pulled her purse down from the refrigerator, led Ben by the elbow to the door.
“Nice to see you, Lewis,” said Clara.
“Yes,” said Ben.
“See you on Sunday, Gary, baby,” said Clara. “I’ll make your favorite cake, with the Life Saver on top.”
The Captain nodded into his palms, wailed.
I STOOD BESIDE GARY, rubbed his neck. I’ve never been a big mantoucher, Catamounts, but the moment seemed right to chance it.
“She loves you,” I said. “You’re her son. She’s no panda.”
“No what?”
“Nothing.”
“She said she saw you in the diner,” said Gary.
“I should have told you,” I said.
“No, it’s okay.”
Gary looked up, his face swollen, cut with an old-time Gooner smile. He rinsed himself at the sink, dried off with a tea towel.
“Fuck me!” he said, popped his temple with the heel of his hand.
“I know,” I said. “This is heavy.”
“No, I mean, fuck me. Now I’ve got to get a job.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I gave them the settlement money. The retractor money.”
“All of it?”
“They’re not doing so hot.”
“You didn’t keep any for yourself?”
“Clean slate.”
“But the money was the clean slate.”
“Felix was right,” said Gary. “That money was a bad amulet. Whoever has it is weak.”
“You want your folks to be weak?”
“Who cares?” said Gary. “They probably did molest me.”
He moved to the window, peeked past the curtain.
“Maybe they’re hiring down at the mayonnaise factory,” he said.
I took out my phone bills, the letter from the IRS.
“What’s that stuff?” said Gary.
“My portfolio,” I said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Nothing. Nothing now. I’ve got to get to work.”
LEAVE IT to Captain Thorazine to throw his money away without asking if I wanted some. What do I care if it’s cursed? I’m weak anywise. I’m bedecked with bad amulets. My belly’s full of poison birds.
I guess I was pretty pissed, because that night at the Moonbeam,
washing dishes for Delbanco Realty’s annual gala, I kept thinking how I should have told Gary about Bob Price and Mira, if only to revel in his heartache. Later I started picturing Gary wandering half-dead in the desert after being raped and robbed by roving bandits. Blood seeped from his wounds into the sand. The sun cooked up squishy blisters on his back. Birds, carrion specialists, swooped overheard. Probably I wasn’t that pissed. It was really just a way to pass the time at work.
Then we had a rush, all the folks from Delbanco Realty demanding coffee for the drunk drive home. It was just me on duty, and Rick, the cook, who waxes his mustache, fancies himself a folk artist. There’s a color print of one of his masterworks up near the punch clock. It looks like your typical angel poster, everything fluffy, radiant, until you notice all the unspooled intestines, the torn wings. It’s some sort of celestial killing floor, all of it framed as though broadcast on an antique television set, the kind with metallic mesh speakers, quaint buttons, knobs. Rick’s brilliant, ask me. It’s a shame he missed that outsider art craze I recently read about in one of my magazines.
“I should have diddled kids,” he yelled through steam. “The critics would have loved my paintings then.”
“Maybe it’s your subject matter,” I said.
“What the hell are you talking about?” said Rick. “People go bananas for angels.”
“Not when they’re impaled on giant meat hooks.”
“But it’s on TV. My painting aren’t real, they’re on TV.”
“I understand that,” I said. “But still.”
Now Roni burst through the doors.
“Rick, we need more flans! We’re running out of flans! How many flans did you make?”
“I don’t know. Fifteen.”
“There are over a hundred guests tonight!”
“Nobody ever eats flan.”
“These people want their flans!”
“Flan,” said Rick.
Roni’s eyes caught mine, or caught mine conducting perv recon on her person. There are some who say you shouldn’t compartmentalize the parts of a woman as it demeans her totality, but Roni’s totality was so damn luscious and immense I’m sure she understood I could only appreciate her in parts, the swell of her calves in those high suede boots, the soft crevasse her bunched breasts made in her blouse.
“I need you in the stockroom, Lewis,” said Roni. “We’ve got to find more napkins.”
The stockroom is not my favorite nook. It’s dark, reeks of decomposing animals, but it seemed a cozy mountain villa here with Roni. Enormous cans of tomato sauce and tubs of red powder filled the shelves around us. Hate to divulge a divine Moonbeam secret, but that red powder is actually barbecue sauce. Stick a hose in the tub, voilà, fresh batch.
It took me a moment to get my bearings in the must, the clutter. Roni wheeled and we nearly collided, stood, huffed fraught breath. Light from a bare bulb fell down her hair, caught the glitter in the hollows of her neck.
“Napkins,” I said.
“Napkins,” said Roni.
We kissed, our hands marauders, jerked each other to the floor.
Roni’s skirt was peel-away. I yanked her giant ass to my face. I was like a man who refuses to lose the ass-eating contest.
It was maybe an ancient kind of contest where the winner wins a kingdom, the loser loses his tongue.
It was a new moist language I gibbered up into her, too. I flipped her over, concocted more delicate lingo for the other hole. Catamounts, perhaps it’s best not to get too graphic, to instead let the subtle play of metaphor carry the day, but I must confess I’d never seen a chick bust a load like that before. Her thick hips were sort of tremoring and her juice just fountained out of her, crystalline, stinky-sweet. Roni moaned, flibbered on the floor, a plump exquisite
porpoise. Me, I was Poseidon, horndog of the deep, or maybe the Man from Atlantis.
When we’d finished and I’d messed my Moonbeam-issue kitchen shirt, Roni shot up, started to dress. Done, near decent, she knocked a packet of napkins from the shelf, rocked it in her arms, a paper baby, while I scrambled with my pants.
“Hurry up,” she said.
“I’m hurrying,” I said. “And don’t worry about anything. I know the drill. I won’t tell anybody and I won’t expect special treatment. I won’t act like we’re ever going to do this again.”
“What drill?” said Roni.
“You mean we can do this again?”
“We’ll see,” said Roni. “But the special treatment thing is true. No special treatment. Except for this kind.”
“Okay,” I said.
We walked out of the stockroom together.
“Where were you guys?” said Rick.
Dessert plates smeared with some foul custard were piled on every surface.
“Lewis was eating my ass,” said Roni.
“Sure he was,” said Rick.
I went back to my station, my weed farm.
“I better take these flans out,” said Roni, nearly knocked down Daddy Miner on her way to the dining hall.
“There you are!” said my father. “And there you go!”
“Bye, Roni,” I called.
“Don’t get any ideas about Roni,” said my father.
“Gravy boat,” I said. “Stay in the now!”
My father smiled his my-son-the-moron smile. I’m sure many Catamounts have fathers with similar grins in their arsenals. Maybe they teach it at the Dad Academy.
“That’s right, kid,” he said. “Gravy boat, and whatever else you said.”
“Stay in the now,” said Rick. “He said stay in the now.”
“Did I ask you anything, Rick?” said Daddy Miner. “FYI, you and I have a big-time flan-related confab ahead of us tonight, so don’t cut out.”
Roni was gone by the time we shut down the kitchen. She hadn’t even left me a note. I guess she wasn’t ready for sex outside the workplace. Rick reported to Daddy Miner’s office for his bawl-out session and I went home, watched TV.
They were pitching end-of-summer sales on the local station and I started thinking about Fontana in his bunker, wary of Hollis but also eager for his summerlong becoming, his transformation, the ever-sprouting pubes of his soul. He was nearing sixty, still talking about the grown-ups. I was half his age, no better. Everybody gets stuck somewhere, though, Catamounts. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad place to put down stakes. It’s not my fault, anyway, I thought, poured another whisky.
“Consuma Cultcha!” I shouted. “You done infantalasized me!”
There I was, all liquored up, giggling, making a fool of myself alone in my home, when suddenly Gwendolyn’s face filled the screen. Her hair fell in whitish waves and her lips looked extrapuffed, a pout shot straight from a needle gun. There was a wise shimmering ache in her eyes as she held aloft a tiny box.