The Nirvana Blues (53 page)

“But, it's just that you sound like … I mean … God. Like Zsa Zsa Gabor.”

“What's that supposed to mean? Another of your coy, cloying, meaningless allusions that are supposed to make people believe you're actually much cleverer than they might at first glance suspect?”

“Zsa Zsa Gabor, lame-brain! She's always getting divorced and cleaning up in the settlements—get it?”

“No need to shout.”

“What are you trying to do, rape me? Destroy everything? Kill our kids? Right before my eyes you're turning into every ugly, vicious, capitalist greedy cliché in the book!”

“
I'm
turning into?”

“Just because I was confused and screwed a person I don't give a damn for doesn't mean you have to turn into some kind of bloodsucking John D. Rockefeller in a skirt.”

“You needn't denigrate her,” Heidi said with diabolical tranquillity. “She's a human being too, you know. And also a woman. Who, no doubt, like all the rest of us, has been trashed since time immemorial by zhlubs like you who just like to find 'em, feel 'em, fuck 'em, and then forget 'em.”

“Whoa!—did you just
defend
her?”

“Well how do you think
she
feels?” Heidi bleated. “Lord knows why but she may have honest loving feelings toward you, and you mock her behind her back. You treat her like dirt. She has a vulnerable impressionable child who would probably like a daddy. But instead you enter their lives—this cold-blooded Fascist who deserts one family in order to viciously exploit another. Then for the frosting on your Nazi cake, you send Michael over to assassinate their monkey. Naturally, I feel sorry for them. And, incidentally, your callousness makes me upchuck.”

“‘Callous'? When have I ever—”

“Let's drop the subject, okay? Finito. Kaput. I'm not interested.”

“You can't just accuse me of all those horrors and then tell me to drop the subject.”

“Can't I?” Her increasingly arctic tone made him shiver. Out of his league in this thing, he was obviously going to have his head, not to mention his balls, handed to him on a platter before he could cry “uncle!” And not just by Heidi, but by Nancy and by Diana also—all three of them at once, in fact. Not to mention what Ray Verboten and Joseph Bonatelli and their ilk had in store. Joe pictured himself a week hence, parked on the mesa in the Green Gorilla, a pistol in his lap, adding the final touches to a will before planting a bullet in his befuddled noggin. Heidi would have departed by then, having scored the coke on her own for a hundred thousand clams, absconding with his kids and all of his cash equity. Citing his spiritual bankruptcy as an excuse, Nancy would have deserted him for good. Diana would have left because he refused to beat her up. Completing the rout, having successfully robbed the First State People's Jug, Eloy Irribarren wouldn't even allow Joe onto his sanctified terrain to say adios to Wolfie.

Tribby pointed anxiously to his watch. “It's almost five o'clock. The trout should be hitting.”

Joe covered the mouthpiece. “Trout? I'm talking to a lunatic, and you're concerned about trout?”

Tribby displayed all his snaggleteeth in a lopsided grin. “The trout will only be hitting for two hours. The lunatics go on forever.”

Heidi asked, “Who are you talking to?”

“Nobody.”

“Why did you muffle the mouthpiece? I could hear your palm squudged against it. You're calling from her house, aren't you? I don't believe it. You're incredible. You know what you remind me of? One of those Nazi doctors who got great glee out of experimenting on people and watching them suffer. Really, Joey, I'm dumbstruck.”

Joe said, “For your personal information and edification, I'd like you to know that I happen to be in Tribby's law office, in case you're interested.”

“Bullshit. You lie like a flounder.”

He was on a grammar-school playground again, playing the dozens!

“I believe the proper expression is ‘lie like a hound.'”

“God, you're funny. If you're in Tribby's office, which I doubt, put him on.”

Joe handed the phone to Tribby: he contemplated it as if it were made of molded dog-turds. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Talk to her. Say hello. Give her your name, your rank, your serial number.”

“I'm a shyster, man, not a marriage counselor.”

“Just for God's sake say hello, will you please?”

“It's all right,” screamed a teeny voice issuing from the mouthpiece. “I can hear him! I believe you! Joey?
Joey!
”

“That'll teach you to accuse me of lying,” he crowed.

“Well, I can't trust you anymore. You've turned into some kind of a frigging Bluebeard.”

“Believe it or not, I'm not having so damn much fun out here, ravishing all these beautiful maidens.”

“Oh gee, tough beans. I'm crying crocodile tears.”

“I bet you are. I bet you just sit there, managing the lousy switchboard, gloating over all the field reports coming in to your flapping little ears concerning my clumsy adventures and imminent demise.”

“Ha ha. Joey? I'm sitting here in
rubble.
I'm sitting here in a rain of
ashes
trying to figure out if I'm supposed to go fishing or cut bait. I asked Adele Flannigan what to do, and she said ‘Lock him out, throw away the key, hire a good lawyer, get all his money.' I asked Suki what to do, and she said ‘What can you do? The grass isn't any greener elsewhere, only different. Try and work it out.' I asked Sally what to do and she asked me back what did I
want
to do? I said I didn't know, I couldn't think of any options that made sense. So she said ‘Fight fire with fire. Go out and have an affair and he'll come crawling home, slavering jealousy and contriteness from his lips like rabid dog foam.' But there's something I really don't understand.”

“And it is…?”

“Everybody makes it sound as if having an affair is like going to the store for a loaf of bread. But I think they're nuts. I look at men right now, they make me sick. Sometimes, out of the blue, I even feel like slugging Michael for no other reason than that he's a man.”

“He's a little boy, Heidi. And if you even lay a finger on him, so help me God—”

“Stop it, Joey! Good Lord, I'm not going to hit him!”

“Well, what are you doing even going around
thinking
that kind of thought?”

“He's a male. He's got a dork. He even has some of your mannerisms. Someday he'll grow up and be a man and start leaving footprints on the women he's trompled. And I don't think there's anything wrong with hating him for that.”

Joe said, “We're not getting anywhere. I'm gonna hang up. But I can assume, can't I, that it's okay to come over tonight?”

“Trout,” Tribby whispered urgently, pointing at his watch. “This can wait, the trout can't. I haven't been fishing in a month. All day I looked forward to right now.”

“What's Tribby saying?”

“Nothing important. Look, do everybody a favor, Tribby, and shut up, huh? I'll be off in a minute.”

“
One
minute.”

“I'll be off, all right? Don't get a hernia.”

“He said ‘trout,' didn't he?” Heidi's voice slid back into a dangerous register. “I did hear correctly. That's exactly what he said.”

“I've got no idea what he said. I wasn't listening.”

“The two of you are going trout fishing, aren't you? Really, Joey, you're fantastic. Right before my very eyes you're turning into a goddam
Martian.
I don't even know you anymore. It's like your chest opened up, your … your breasts swung open like a couple of saloon doors, and your heart fell out, dressed in black, wearing double six-guns and a Jack Palance mask.”

“Are you on a drug? Are you drinking?”

“I mean, I'm sitting here at home, trying to be cheerful for the kids, whose lives are in danger, feeling so rotten I can barely move, and you're out there blithely fornicating and trout fishing. Pee—yew!”

“Damn it, Heidi, I am
not
going trout fishing!”

Astonished, Tribby hollered “What?” at the same time Heidi declared emphatically, “Yes you are. I'm getting those vibes. I can tell from the tone of your voice you're blushing.”

Frantically, Tribby hissed, “Whaddayou mean we ain't going fishing? I canceled two appointments.”

Joe muffled the receiver. “I
know
we're going fishing, dummy, but if Heidi finds out … I mean, you should listen to the crap I'm tasting on the other end of this wire.”

“We don't have all day,” Tribby urged. “Hang up and let's hit the road.”

“Hey, Heidi, come on, please—I'm gonna hang up now. Tribby's waiting for a call.”

“That's another lie. Keep it up, brother, and all you'll have to do in September, to have enough wood for the winter, is cut off your nose.”

“Ha ha.”

“I talked to Nikita again this afternoon.”

“Oh, and what did Mr. Magic have to say?” Joe made imploring gestures toward Tribby: the lawyer grimaced like a trussed man on a plank heading for a buzz saw.

“He said he thought we could work it out if only you weren't so stubborn.”

“That hypocritical egomaniac is a phony!”

“That's your opinion.”

“What have you decided to do—march into the ocean with the rest of the lemmings?”

“He listens to me, Joey. Your opinion to the contrary, I think he's a wise man.”

“He's evil! He's like a green, carnivorous slime! I can't believe you suddenly started to take him seriously!”

“Oh, Jesus!” Joe could practically hear teeth gnashing. “Sometimes I hate you so much I think I would get great satisfaction from pouring Drano on your balls, I really do.”

Joe whined. “But you used to ridicule the man! Not two weeks ago you called him an ego-eater.”

“That was two weeks ago. But thanks to Suki I've learned that he happens to be a very astute and serious and beautiful human being, the opinion of some Philistines to the contrary.”

“Two days ago you asked me if Nancy and I picked lice out of each other's fur!”

“That was two days ago.”

Before Joe could clap his hand over the receiver, Tribby howled,
“Trout is what it's all about!”

“I heard
that,
” Heidi snapped vindictively.

“Tribby, what's the matter with you, man? You're supposed to be on
my
side.”

“It's five-thirty, dammit. We've already lost half an hour.”

“But Heidi and I are trying to hold together a very fragile situation. I can't be bothered right now with piscatorial considerations.”

“Yes you can,” Heidi said. “I'm hanging up.”

“Before you do, let's get one thing straight—Nikita Smatterling is a power-tripping guru who'll embrace any faith if there's a convert and a painting sale in it.”

“You've become totally intolerant, Joey. You're practically a Fascist.”

“Fascist?”

“You leave home on the spur of any whim, get drunk, spend all our grocery money, screw the neighborhood divorcees, and cavalierly trot off trout fishing while the wife and kiddies are at home, in shock, sitting on a pile of cocaine, their lives threatened by midnight callers, trying to piece back together their shattered lives—and if that isn't a Fascist, what is? Should I add anything else like Conspiring in Secret with Lawyer Friends in Order to Nail Wifey Before She Even Knows the Legal Battle Has Been Joined?”

Joe sighed wearily. “I thought you were hanging up.”

“I changed my mind.”

“Well, I think
I'm
gonna hang up.”

“Just like that, without deciding anything? Without letting me know if you're coming over tonight, or what?”

“Way back at the start of our conversation, all I wanted to know was could I come over or couldn't I, that's all. But you hadda make a federal case out of it!”

“Oh, I like that. Very cute.
I'm
to blame.
I
made a federal case out of it.
I
decided to invest twelve grand in uncut cocaine and then chickened out of marketing it. I suppose I'm also to blame for screwing Miss Archangel over there, too?”

“Wow. You really got me that time. The connection there I totally fail to comprehend.”

“I drove you to it, right? My frigidity in bed? The fact that my chest isn't big enough? The fact that two weeks ago I denied you a screw because my cunt hurt, and that drove your poor sensitive poetic little body out into the cold cruel world to seek gratification with the first tushy that batted an eyelash, right? It's
my
fault, because I don't understand you. It's
my
fault because I always burn the toast in the morning. It's
my
fault because, after I cook dinner and vacuum the house and sew the kids' clothes, I'm so tired out that I can't muster it to look glamorous enough for Joe Miniver, boy superman, who, when he comes home smelling like a garbage truck, wants to get hit by Anita Ekberg and Lauren Hutton all rolled into one.”

Tribby rolled his eyes and said, “Later, turkey.” Trailing bitter cigarette smoke, he slouched unhappily out of his office. “Don't bother locking the door when you split,” he growled. “I never lock it. I hope someday they steal me blind.”

“Wait—
Tribby!
 … Heidi?”

“Go ahead. Go with him. I'll tell the kids Daddy can't come over to wrestle because he went fishing.”

“Aw, you're crazy.” Joe sagged. Hopeless, hopeless, hopeless. They both sounded crazy. Though they each had a fairly decent command of the English language, they'd forgotten how to talk. Some main emotional bearing was worn out, and the meaning of language could no longer turn on it.