Closet Case (Robert Rodi Essentials) (10 page)

Lionel was so enraptured by the turn of events that he felt he had to tell someone about it or burst like a piñata. So after taking a cab to the Loop and retrieving his car, he drove to Live Long and Prosper, the science-fiction bookstore where Yolanda worked as a sort of clerk-cum-archivist.

When he entered the premises, passing beneath a dangling mobile of papier-mâché starships that never failed to bean him in the head any time he dared transgress these walls, he found that Yolanda had left the counter and stepped into a far aisle. There she was busy relating the merits of a certain paperback offering to a large, gray-skinned customer who carried a bulging briefcase and wore a highly unseasonable parka, and who appeared to be having trouble breathing (all in all, thought Lionel, not an atypical science-fiction fan).

“This is not the next entry in the Attiveldan Tetralogy,” Yolanda said as she passed the book to the customer, who opened it to a random page and practically touched his face to it as he skimmed down the lines of text. “That does not come out till December. But this is a collection of stories that all take place in the Attiveldan cosmology, and feature some of the same characters in adventures that take place before the Tetralogy begins.”

The customer turned his thick head toward her, slowly, like one of the animal kingdom’s larger beasts of burden. His hair was so greasy that despite its length it stayed clamped to his skull, resembling nothing so much as a shiny brown bathing cap. “What about Grand Duke Giron?” he asked in a voice like the bleat of a sheep.

“He has a small part in one of the early entries.” She tried to take the book from him, to show him the story in question, but he snatched in away from her.

“And Barbeeta?” he yelped. “Is
she
in here?”

“Well, no, she is not,” Yolanda answered as politely as possible. “Remember, she was not born until the second book of the Tetralogy, and these stories take place
before.
There is, however, a story about Barbeeta’s mother, which also reveals who her father was — and whether he was human or, as has been speculated, was in fact one of the presences of Yeryar.”

The customer frowned. “Well? Which is it?”

She shook her head. “I must not tell. It would spoil the surprise for you.”

He chuffed, then looked again at the glossy-covered paperback which he was soiling with his grime-encrusted hands. (Lionel certainly hoped he bought it, for who else would want it now?) He turned for one last question. “What about the Qi?”

Yolanda was unfazed. “Oh yes, indeed,” she enthused, and Lionel rolled his eyes. When on earth did she find time to read all this junk? “The concluding story, as a matter of fact, is set entirely in the Qi Dominion, and tells why that race first decided to attempt colonization of Attiveldan space.”

The customer sighed and shut the book. “Okay. I’ll take it.”

She turned to lead him to the counter, and it was then she caught sight of Lionel. She mouthed the words
One moment,
then returned her attention to her customer.

She located the book’s price with her fingernail and rang it into the cash register. “With tax, six-fourteen, please,” she said sweetly, and as she inserted the book into a paper bag and taped it shut for him, he reached deep into the parka pockets and produced four crumpled dollar bills, one at a time, and presented them to her. Then he went back to pocket-spelunking, producing a smattering of food crumbs, bits of lint, two used Band-Aids, and enough loose change to make up the balance due.

Lionel, who stood at the magazine rack holding an open copy of
Mondo
and pretending he understood even the first thing about it, watched from the corner of his eye as Yolanda regarded the heap of unappetizing currency on the counter before her, a semi-stricken look on her face. She didn’t even attempt to count it, she just handed the bag to the customer and said, “Thank you! Come again!”

He grunted and headed for the door — his large head grazing against the starships and setting them into asynchronous flight.

When he was gone, Lionel dropped the magazine back onto the rack and trotted over to Yolanda, who was with some perplexity regarding the oily mess of pocket change her customer had left behind. “Don’t touch it,” he advised her. “You’re sure to get a rash. Also possibly leprosy.”

Sensing that she was being mocked, she grimaced at him, then bravely swept it all into her open palm and deposited it (rather eagerly, Lionel thought) into the top drawer of the cash register. Then wiping her hands on her Levis, she said, “Hello, Lionel, what is new?”

“What’s new?” he repeated gleefully. “Well, let’s see: so far today I’ve done jail time and fallen in love.”

“Oh,” she said coolly, stepping from behind the counter and sailing past him to the middle aisle, where she began moving copies of a book called
Wormwitch’s Prophecy
from a cardboard shipping box to a special display stand that had been set up for them. Lionel wondered if she knew what she was doing; the cover of the book would’ve been enough to scare off any normal reader, with a big snake’s head on a slender woman’s body, complete with enormous scaly breasts that looked like Gucci watermelons. If it were up to him, he’d have stowed this stinker at the back of the store, not at the checkout counter. “My night here has been quieter than that,” she added dismissively.

He could see now that she was preoccupied. “Yolanda,” he said, “I’m not kidding. I really
was
in the slammer. Well, a holding cell, anyway. And I really
am
in love.”

She turned toward him, brows knit, and swept a strand of hair from her face.
“Oh,”
she said. “I — do not know what to say. Are you all right?”

“All right? I’m
amazing
.”

“You were not molested in custody, then?”

“I should’ve been so lucky.”

She put her hands to her face and started weeping, astonishing him.

His spirits plummeted. They’d been perched rather precariously at their dizzying height to begin with, and Yolanda’s sobbing was more than enough to topple them. He reached over and took one of her hands away form her face. She lowered her head so that he wouldn’t see her tears. “Hey,” he said. “Yolanda. What’s wrong?”

She shook her head and dried her eyes with the knuckle of her forefinger. “You will think I am silly.”

He released his grip on her. “Not any more than usual.”

She snorted a laugh; his teasing had taken her by surprise. Smiling now, she reached into the pocket of her jeans — which were so tight that when her hand reemerged, her fingers bore the mark of the pocket’s stitching — and fished out a fraying tissue, on which she now blew her nose. “It is Bob,” she said, daubing her nostrils with the balled-up wad.

Lionel felt a kind of stillness, as tough his blood had suddenly stopped flowing. It was partly due to his anxiety for his friend’s distress, partly due to anticipation of some
really
good dirt. “What is it?” he asked, his voice hushed. “Another woman?”

“Oh, no!” she said wildly, stuffing the tissue back into her pocket. “That I could handle. I would know what to do, how to fight for him. But I am losing him to other men.”

Lionel felt like he’d just scored the trash-talking jackpot. “I
knew
it,” he said, narrowing his eyes and shaking his head. “Goddamn it, I am
that
good.”

She sniffled and looked at him strangely. “Do not be ridiculous, Lionel. You could not possibly have foreseen this.”

He leaned against the display case, rather proud of himself. “I’ve got greater powers of observation than you know, kid,” he boasted.

“Then why did you not warn me?”

“Wa—
warn
you?” he said, a little flustered. “You would’ve wanted to hear that? From
me
?”

“Yes! I might have prevented it. Oh, Lionel,” she said, a little catch in her voice, “I am so afraid of what they will do to him! What if they make him sit around a campfire naked and do his private business in the bushes? I know they will! They will make him put on cheap war paint, and he becomes suicidal when his skin breaks out!” She clutched her forehead in dismay. “And what will they make him
eat
? He cannot digest any cut of meat that is not covered in Bernaise sauce.”

Lionel knit his brows. “Maybe we’d better make it real clear what we’re talking about here.”

“I thought you said you knew.” She returned to the counter and plopped onto the stool with a sigh. “Never mind. His boss at the insurance company has invited four of the junior executives to accompany him on a ‘male retreat’ based on the writings of a musician named Nathan Beatty. It is called ‘Resurrecting Your Inner Chieftain.’ That is Beatty’s word for what modern men have lost: the ‘chieftaincy of their destinies.’ And the only way they can find it again is to subject themselves to the wisdom of their ‘tribal elders.’ Lionel, it sounds like something you would find in one of the books we sell
here
.” She swept her hair out of her face and looked at him plaintively. “Bob is
terrified
of going. Yet if he does not go, he will not be promoted from his current position.”

“His boss
told
him that?” Lionel asked, incredulous.

She picked up a tiny rubber dragon and unconsciously started twisting its neck. “No, but it was made clear in other ways. It was … what is the word, Lionel?”

“Implicit?”

“Yes, that. Thank you,” she said, and all at once the dragon’s head snapped off. She reached under the counter and dropped it into a wastebasket. “His boss has already attended one retreat last year, and Bob said he came back utterly changed. Now he has made it
implicit
that only those who are his tribal ‘brothers’ will continue up the ladder in the company. My poor, sweet Bob! He is not like other men. That is why I became so upset when you made a joke about prison rape. It could
happen
to him. If they sense his weakness …”

Lionel hopped onto the counter and folded his hands. He looked at this thumbs, entwined together like chubby pink hatchlings in a nest, and did his best to keep a straight face. He couldn’t take this problem of Yolanda’s even a fraction as seriously as she did, because he found it so perversely funny. He cleared his throat to prevent any levity from sneaking into his voice, and said, “Hon, I’ve read about these ‘retreats.’ The men who sign up for them mainly go off together to fart and belch freely like they used to at summer camp. Then they come back and feel like they have some control over their lives because they’ve spent a week peeing in the sink and not having to answer for it. It’s harmless. Bob doesn’t need to be afraid to go. You should tell him.”

“Oh,”
she said, shaking her head emphatically, “I could
not.
He does not
admit
that he is afraid. He says he thinks it will be a ‘hoot.’ He tells me these retreats are ‘all the rage’ because they have been written about in magazines he likes. But I can see behind his eyes and there is terror there. Last night I was helping him pack and I went into his bathroom and found him standing at the counter with his Louis Vuitton cosmetics bag open, trying to decide which of his ointments and gels he should take with him. He said he was trying to pare it down to ‘absolute necessities,’ and asked if I thought his Clinique Scruffing Lotion was a nonessential, or should he pack it just in case? You should have seen the look on his face when I said he would probably be allowed only a bar of Irish Spring and a plastic comb.”

Lionel felt the need to clear his throat again. He examined his cuticles, trying
very
hard not to let Yolanda get a good look at his face lest she see the malicious glee in it. He said, “Let me play devil’s advocate, here. How do you know this retreat won’t do him some good? I mean, it could end up making him more assertive and — I don’t know — resourceful. I’m not saying he needs it or anything, but if he’s willing to go through with it, well, shouldn’t we give it the benefit of the doubt? And if it butches him up a bit, is that so awful? I mean, we all love Bob, but come on, if rediscovering the tribal savage in him means he doesn’t go around ironing his socks anymore, can it be such a bad thing?”

He looked up from his cuticles and met Yolanda’s eyes. He saw at once that her nostrils were flaring, a sure indication of her fury. “Lionel,” she said in a low voice, “sometimes I think you understand nothing at all.”

It was as fierce an admonition as she’d ever given him, and he was chastened by it. He winced, and immediately started backpedaling. “Sorry, hon, I was just trying to cheer you up.” He slid off the counter and stuck his hands in his pockets, and tried to looked abashed. “You’re right, it sucks. I guess I’m just so sky-high myself right now, I can’t imagine anyone else’s life not being wonderful too.”

She shook her head; and as the long coils of hair beat her face, they must have knocked the anger out of her as well, for when she stopped and looked at him again, she was no longer billowing like a hyperactive blowfish. “I forgot about that,” she said, actually smiling at him. “Forgive me for whining so much about my own problems. You say you were in custody? No, wait — first tell me of this new love of yours.” She leaned across the counter and a glow of rosy expectation lit her face.

“Well, his name is Emil, and he’s a medical student from Romania who’s been in America for under a year and he’s also a political activist who’s trying to get the United States to intervene in independence for Transylvania.”

Her smile grew a little forced, but being a loyal friend she nodded happily. “He sounds … very interesting. Where did you meet him?”

“As I matter of fact I met him in the lock-up. I even posted his bail!”

She furrowed her brow. “Well, that brings us back to my first question. What were you
doing
there, Lionel?”

“I got arrested for starting a riot in front of the Romanian Consulate.”

She met this news with no expression at all. “I see,” she said.