Guy Noir and the Straight Skinny (15 page)

“I don’t know about ‘skidding into the hereafter,’” he said. “I liked it at first, and now I’m not sure.”

“How about ‘flapping into the hereafter’?”

“I don’t know. Let me hear you say it.”

“You want me to say it?”

“Yeah. Say it.”

“Wouldn’t make any sense coming from me. You’re the one with the heater.”

“Here.” He handed me his pistol.

“Sit down,” I said. “I can’t get the right feel for it with you standing there.”

So he sat down in the pew.

“Actually,” I said, “I think it’d be more realistic if you kneel.”

“I just want to hear the line,” he said.

“I gotta feel it before I can say it,” I said. “I want to say it with conviction.”

So he pulled out a kneeler and knelt on it, as if in prayer, leaning forward over the back of the pew in front.

“I gotta have a motivation,” I said. “What’s the story?”

“Imagine that you caught me welshing on a deal, and you came to find me, and there I was in church, naked, about to stick it to my girlfriend, Chanterelle, and that’s when you pulled the gun on me,” he said.

“You dirty rat,” I said, and I conked him a good hard one on the noggin, and he toppled over, and his head bounced off the arm of the pew, and he lay crumpled in the aisle, getting his nice suit wrinkled. Johnny Banana, Mr. Big himself, toppled in the sanctuary of St. John the Lesser, saliva trickling out of a corner of his mouth.

I poked him with my toe and said, “How quickly the tables turn, banana brain. Vanity goeth before a fall, and so forth and so on.”

I stuck the pectoral cross in Mr. Banana’s limp paw and called Lieutenant McCafferty and told him I’d gone to church for early mass and caught someone stealing a crucifix and could he come right away, and then I called up Gene Williker and said, “Big scoop, pal,” and told him, and called Boyd Freud, and then I slipped out the side door and spotted a black car, motor idling, the lights on, four goons in pinstripes inside it with headphones on, heads bouncing to the beat of different drummers, and I stuffed a wad of cardboard up the tailpipe, and a couple minutes later, up comes McCafferty in the squad car and peels to a stop and jumps out to find the goons in dreamland from carbon monoxide and Johnny Banana staggering out the church door with a cross in his hand, bleeding from where I had whopped him. He stood in the entrance, swaying like a tall spruce in a high wind. “You’ll never take me alive, copper,” he said, and McCafferty snapped the cuffs on him and then spotted me.

“What you looking at, Noir?” he said. “You involved in this? If you are, I got an extra pair of cuffs in the car.”

“Just out for a walk in my cassock, and I stopped to admire the fine police work,” I said. “I’d offer to lend a hand, but it looks like you got it under control. Remind me to drop a note to Mayor Coleman and tell him that when the chiefship comes open, there’s no need to look outside the department.” McCafferty shrugged and went to call for reinforcements. Mr. Banana gave me a ferocious and baleful look. It would’ve been more ferocious, but his eye was starting to swell shut from where he’d hit his head. “I’ll get you, Noir, if it’s the last thing I do,” he growled.

“Johnny,” I said. “I don’t mean to put words in your mouth, but the press will be on the scene shortly, and you want to make a good impression. Now you could say something rough and mean, like ‘I’ll be on a plane and out of this stinkin’ town before you guys have another cuppa coffee.’ Or you could go for a humorous touch—something like ‘Well, looky who showed up at the party. What’s the matter, boys? Ain’t you ever seen a man in bracelets before?’ Or how about ‘Tell my muddah I ain’t never going to early Mass again’?”

Mr. Banana pondered these possibilities. “What’s wrong with ‘I’ll get you if it’s the last thing I do’?”

“Johnny,” I said. “As a friend, I got to tell you, that is a horseshit line. Number one, it’s craven and mealy-mouthed, and number two, people don’t know who I am. It’s Banana they know. Noir they never heard of. It’s like Richard Nixon blaming a stenographer for Watergate. Think big, Johnny.”

“Think big?”

I whispered the phrase in his ear. And up rolled the paddy wagon, and six cops jumped out and, ten seconds later, Gene Willikers and his photographer Flash Flanagan, who was jumping around like crazy, his Speed Graphic going
kachik kachik kachik kachik,
snapping McCafferty, who stood patiently in an aggressive law-enforcement pose, right hand on his pistol handle, left hand on his hip, hat at a rakish angle, a stern but judicious and slightly jaded expression on his face, as if he were weary of all the attention and acclaim.

Johnny faced the camera and said, “You think you got Johnny Banana, but all you got is a handful of shadows. I’ll be out of this stinking town before you guys”—and then he forgot the line—“before you guys”—he looked around for me—“before you guys get your second cup of coffee and a jelly doughnut.” He looked grandly contemptuous, just as a top-level mobster should look, curled lip and all. And then Boyd Freud wheeled up in the Channel 5 newsmobile, and McCafferty had to wait for the newsman to unbundle his camera and a portable floodlight and a microphone, and when he finally had the camera on his shoulder, McCafferty uncuffed Johnny Banana and hauled him back into the church, and when Boyd yelled “Action!” the detective walked the perp down the steps.

“Any comment, Mr. Banana?” said Boyd.

“I already said what I had to say.”

“Okay, but I didn’t get it on tape.”

Johnny thought for a moment. “By the time you guys get out of this stinking town, I’ll be on my third cup of coffee. Tell my mother I’ll be home for lunch,” he said. Not a bad line at all. McCafferty recuffed him and said, “Watch your head, Banana,” and shoved him into the back of the squad car.

Gene asked me what happened, and I said, “Gene, it was ace police work, top to bottom. I was a block away, out for a walk, and heard a scuffle and saw McCafferty overpower the five of them single-handed, and by the time I arrived on the scene, the show was over.”

“Can I quote you?”

“Not by name,” I said. “I don’t want to steal the lieutenant’s spotlight.”

“You’ve lost weight,” he said. “You have some sort of wasting disease? Should we be updating the obituary?”

“Ask my girlfriends,” I said. “I keep three of them busy seven days a week.”

“I hear you moved to Minneapolis.”

“A weekend place,” I said. “I’m a St. Paul boy. There is no place like home.”

19

Epilogue, I guess

I WALKED AWAY FROM THE
scene, the red and blue lights flashing, into the dark night of downtown St. Paul. Not much nightlife at two a.m. People poop out around ten or eleven, and the young have flown to look for trouble in Minneapolis. My car was parked in a lot around there somewhere. I walked up the alley behind Robert’s Ready-to-Wear and Closets R Us and Alpine Recliners and spotted a shadowy figure knocking on the stage door of the Fitzgerald Theater in a hopeless, furtive way. He wore faded jeans and red shoes and red socks and a maroon jacket with a big
A
on it and
ANOKA TORNADOES.

I tapped him on the shoulder. “The show’s not here tonight, pal. It’s in New York this month.”

He turned, and I recognized him as the show’s old announcer, the one who read the commercials for duct tape and cat food and baked products. His enormous gray eyebrows were twitching, and his eyes were runny, and he looked so lost that I almost wanted to put an arm around him.

“New York! Why didn’t anyone tell me?” He seemed a little confused, which is not so unusual for an older person.

“It’s pretty huge in New York ever since it became
Los Pampas Casa Companeros.
They got Ricardo Dorito and Butch Tamale and Peter Ostinato and Vern Suarez and Janis Hernandez and Filipo Bracero and all the big salsa stars. It’s selling out Madison Square Garden twice on Saturday plus a Sunday matinee. Busloads of college kids on Eighth Avenue. Ticket scalpers getting $150 for a seat up in the peanut gallery.”

He looked at me mournfully. “I was on that show for many years.”

“Yes, I know,” I said.

“Believe it or not, I was the host.”

“I was aware of that.”

“I had a parking spot here right beside the loading dock and a dressing room of my own with a mirror and little lightbulbs all around it, and there was a production assistant who brought me coffee and cookies. I had it so good.”

I asked him, “Can I call you a cab? Is there someone at home who could come and get you? Where are you living now?” He craned his neck and looked up and down the street. “My car’s around here somewhere,” he said. I walked him up Wabasha to Tenth Street. “I started that show in 1974,” he said. “They all laughed when I told them I was going to do it, and then I got up and did my monologue, and they stopped laughing. I never missed a show. Hundred percent attendance record. Always showed up on time. I didn’t want to retire, but they tricked me into taking a sabbatical, and when I returned, they had switched it to Spanish. They offered to pay for Spanish lessons, so I took those for a few months, but my teacher, Carmela, spoke a minor dialect from Yucatán that Spanish-speakers refer to as
discurso estúpido,
and when I went on the show and did a monologue in Spanish, people laughed themselves red in the face. There wasn’t a dry seat in the house. I asked if I could do sound effects, and they auditioned me, and I was okay with cows, pigs, dogs, cats, primates, and tropical birds, but I couldn’t whinny and my pistol shot sounded like someone coughing up marshmallows. So I took the long hike. I’ve been waiting for them to decide where to hold the retirement dinner. You know, where they give me the keys to a new convertible. It was supposed to be in February, but the woman who’s running the show doesn’t speak good English, and I think she told me the dinner will be at La Cucaracha in a couple months, which is a rather small restaurant, and that they’ll present me with a bicycle.” We located his car, thank God, on St. Peter. An old green Volvo with Gore 2000
bumper stickers and what looked like five hundred copies of his memoir,
A Quiet Week
, in the backseat. I noticed a credit-card stamper and a sign,
AUTOGRAPHED COPIES, NO EXTRA CHARGE.
The guy was driving around town selling his book out of the backseat of his car. He offered me a ride, but I said no thanks, I didn’t know where I was going.

I still don’t. I’m a New York guy who wound up in St. Paul, Minnesota, on the gray-green Mississippi, all for the love of a beautiful woman, and now I’m thinking maybe I’ll head back to New York and find a sublet in the West Nineties and get a job with Caribbean Celebrity Sunset Cruises, whose proprietor, Smiling Max Waxman, I know from grade school. Very successful. Hires faded celebrities down on their luck and pays them peanuts and charges wealthy geezers a king’s ransom to hobnob with the formerly famous, people like the Tropikettes and comedian Danny Meadows and Eddie Hobbs, who played the nosy neighbor on
That Darn Ricky,
the one with the cigar who kept saying, “What about it? What about it?” Max says he’ll hire me as a Gentleman Host whose job it is to dance with unaccompanied ladies and show interest in the photos of their grandchildren. Work January through March and earn your nut for the year and, if you wish, spend April to December sitting in Central Park watching the women run past. Ah, New York. It looks mighty good to me except on even-numbered days, when I’m thinking,
Stick around. Settle down. One of these days you will meet her, and your heart will go wild and the music will play, and you’ll get up and dance.
I sit in the Brew Ha Ha with my latte and work the
Times
crossword and try to look cool and unavailable yet irresistible, and inevitably some fabulous young woman plops down across the table with book in hand, and my heart goes crazy but I am cool and do not throw myself into her lap and cry out
O you you you, kiss that book goodbye, Pretty Woman, you dream maker, you four-star lover, let us dally, Little Buttercup, boop-boop-a-doop let me be your Ding Dong Daddy-O and we’ll tango on our tippy-toes through Babylon, baby doll, down the Boulevard of Broken Hearts and who cares about tomorrow, baby, let them do the math, we’ll have us
eine kleine amour, mio caro,
shang shang a lang, and make the bed bounce and the night get sparkly and honey drip from the stratosphere, Anything Your Heart Desires, Baby Doll, I am here to make it happen.

No, I don’t say that. I say, “How’s it going?” and she says, “Okay,” in a desultory way.

The Pillsbury Mill apartment is gone and that whole fantasy of elegance on the Mississippi. The checks stopped coming after Naomi sold Elongate to Larry B. Larry for a lifetime guarantee of a quarter-million per annum, and the housing bubble popped, and there I was with a monster of a mortgage. Boo-hoo for me. I gave the condo back to the bank and returned to the Shropshire Arms, tail between my legs, where Doris has mellowed somewhat and gave me a good deal on a one-bedroom one floor below my old pad, which is now occupied by a babe named Bijoux Benson, who walks barefoot across my ceiling late at night and creates beautiful visions of The Life To Come. She is a designer or something, and I’ve seen her only now and then, and I almost fell over from sheer admiration, the woman is long and lean and moves like a panther with a thousand-watt smile. A sweetie with brunette bedroom hair and long delicate fingers it would be a thrill just to take in my hand.

“You got a crush on her, dontcha, well la-di-da,” said Doris. “You watch your step with me, or I am going to divulge to Bijoux your little secret.”

“What’s that?”

“You know what’s that. You’ve got worms, mister.”

Whapppppp.

“How’d you know that, Doris?”

“A lot of people know that. So don’t get on your high horse. Just do as you’re told, and everything’s cool.”

“What are you saying, Doris?”

“I’m saying that I want you to take me out once in a while. We don’t have to kiss or hold hands. I just want to maybe take your arm and sit next to you, and you can act like you’re a little bit sweet on me.”

Well, she had me over a barrel. Every day I listen for Bijoux unlocking her door and I dash into the hall and get on the elevator as she descends, and I get ten seconds with her, but she wouldn’t smile at me so warmly if she knew I had worms, so I must now squire Doris around to a movie or concert, Doris with her croaky voice and liniment odor and sensible shoes, Doris with the big rings on her knobby fingers and the plastic bag instead of a purse.

NAOMI IS IN SOUTHAMPTON WITH
the Rama Lama Monongahela, and though she is very wealthy, she leads a simple, healthy life and has become a Positivist, which has to do with circularizing your neurons using an electric responder, which I gather plugs into an outlet implanted in your navel. I hope she is okay. She e-mails me now and then to inquire about my health and recommend particular supplements and vitamins. Sharon met a guy named Lenny Browder who roasts her beans and is good for her in other ways, I’m sure. As for me, I am still skinny, thanks to worms. I tell people it’s metabolism, because if people find out you have parasites, they no longer want to sit at your table. That is a proven fact.

Sugar wanted to get back together, and maybe we could have, but one morning she called me before I’d had my second cup of coffee and said, “I called to see how you’re doing.”

“I’m doing okay considering that it’s seven thirty a.m.”

“You don’t sound okay.”

“Okay, why don’t you tell me how I’m doing then?”

“Don’t get all defensive about it.”

“You call up and ask me a question, and then you answer it. It’s the old story with us, Sugar. We get on the phone, and fifteen seconds later we’re arguing.”

“It’s been more than fifteen seconds. It’s been more than thirty seconds.”

“Okay, forty-five seconds later we’re arguing.”

“I thought you’d be glad to hear from me. I didn’t know you’d be timing me with a stopwatch.”

I took a deep breath. “How are you, Sugar?”

“You really want to know, or you just asking to be polite?”

I told her I was asking just to be polite.

“That’s what I thought. But I’ll tell you anyway. Not so good.”

I told her I was sorry to hear that.

“Are you really?”

I said that yes, I really was.

“I miss you so much, Guy,” she said. “That’s why I feel lousy. I think we’ve got something good between us. Why don’t we go back and recapture it?”

I explained that just because we had a good time making love, it didn’t mean that we were meant for each other.

This put her in a bad mood, and she talked for some time about men and their inability to commit. I did not hold the phone up close to my ear, since I had heard this talk before. I set the phone quietly on the desk, and I heard it as a pleasant distant music similar to a housefly buzzing but lovelier than that, while I busied myself paying bills. And then the buzzing stopped. I picked up the phone.

“Well?” she said.

I said, “You’re absolutely right.”

“So what are you going to do about it then?”

“Nothing to be done. I was in love with you once, Sugar. Once was enough. I’m immune now.”

“You talk about it like it was a disease.” And she hung up.

I’ll bet she expected me to call her back and apologize. I didn’t. So she married a Swede named Torben with a head like a pear who says dumb things in a voice you can hear a block away. Good luck with that, I say.

WHAT DID I LEARN FROM
the Year of the Tapeworm? That we’re all full of need, and we’re not sure what for. You think you want to be skinny so you drop sixty pounds, and then you find out that what you really want is your youth, or someone to love you in that helpless, wholehearted way that is so rare in real life. As someone once said: “Give me ambiguity or give me something else.” We want to be loved because we’re unique, and not unique in the way that everyone is unique, but really unique. Love is what life is all about. Like all generalizations, that one is probably off the mark. But who knows? Like the song says, “Freedom’s just another word for not knowing what is going on.”

AS FOR JOEY ROAST BEEF,
he is all sweetness and light, no more homicidal rages. The new meds have done wonders: a blue pill the size of a ladybug, twice a day, turned him into a genial old coot sitting in a sunny corner of Danny’s with McCafferty and reminiscing about the old days at Gallivan’s bar back when men smoked cigars and drank four martinis and drove home singing. A massage studio called A Touch of Wonder took over my office on the twelfth floor of the Acme Building after the Bogus Boys attack, and Lou, the manager, gave the Touch of Wonder people a six-year lease, which hurt me, what with my long tenancy, and his offer to me of a windowless cubicle in the “lower lobby” (what most people would call a
basement)
was salt in the wound, and one day I says to Joey Junior (who had heard about the worms and came to me with an idea for a fish lure with bacon for bait that is soaked in Nembutol so it numbs the fish’s lips against the pain of the hook, which I told him was “interesting” but “not for me at this particular time”)—I says to Joey Junior, “If a person were going to try to get the attention of a certain business, let’s say, to persuade them to move and do it quicklike, not dink around for weeks and months, what might a person do? Not saying it’s me or anybody I know. Just purely hypothetical.”

Joey Junior sat and pondered this for a moment, all 440 pounds of him, and twiddled his jumping-walleye necktie and smoothed out the wrinkles in his green rayon suit, and he said, “Well, my hypothetical advice—not saying I’d actually recommend doing this, but strictly on a theoretical basis, just as an example of what
might
be done—I’d take a hypothetical pistol and figuratively point it at the alleged front window of the establishment and put about four to six apparent holes through the plate glass and leave an imaginary note saying, ‘Next time it’ll be you, dogface.’ That’d be my hypotheticals on that.”

“What if this business is on the twelfth floor and there are no front windows, just back windows?”

“I’d point the so-called pistol at the front door and put four to six apparent holes through that.”

“Thank you for the example.”

“You’re very welcome.”

AND THAT VERY NIGHT, SOMEONE
went and shot up the door of A Touch of Wonder and blasted the face cradle off their massage table and silenced the mp3 player that played the Peruvian flute music, and the massage folks found a nicer location on Grand Avenue west of Macalester College, and Lou let me back in on the condition that I fix the door myself, which I now have done.