Banana

  “You don’t think that I’ve thought of that?”

  As one of the white-coated clones stuck a thick needle into Jonathan Connor’s hip, I suddenly realized what was happening.

  “A bone marrow transplant! You’re going to replace your bone marrow with his. That’s why you’re so white! You’ve taken chemo. You’ve lost it, Benjamin.”

  “But you must agree that it’s brilliant.”

  Benjamin flashed his cosmetically altered teeth as he settled into a comfortable black chair. Two doctors arrived, hooked him to an array of monitors and stuck him with several needles to prepare for the procedure.

  “By replacing my bone marrow with Jonathan’s, our blood tests, and DNA would be genetically identical. I will even have his little allergy to bananas. I’ve already had laser retinal surgery to replicate his retina, and his fingerprints and footprints have been etched into mine. A foolproof plan except for one thing.”

  I watched in astonishment as Nurse Denver stepped closer with a large scalpel in her hand. Jonathan Connor was turning blue now. The transfusion was approaching completion. A technician putting a large C-arm X-ray machine in place activated it. A 0.5-centimeter shadow in Jonathan Connor’s neck showed on the screen indicating a piece of metal. Nurse Denver quickly cut out a chunk of flesh containing the shadow, and mobilized the metal. Blood slowly dripped onto the floor. She added some water to a syringe, dropped the metal in, and stuck it in Benjamin’s neck.

  “Microchip,” he said, wincing as the needle went in. “Every relative of the president is implanted with one for easy location.”

  Benjamin looked over at Jonathan Connor. A technician was rolling away the C-arm while another removed the endotracheal tube. There was a sucking sound, and then a whimper. Jonathan Connor passed slowly into the night.

  I was speechless, powerless to change the horror that had taken place. A technician whispered in Benjamin’s ear, then, he turned and spoke.

  “We’ve got a little problem though, Dr. Dwyer, do you mind accompanying me to the foyer?”

  I trudged after Benjamin, numb after what I’d seen. An entourage of doctors followed, ensuring the safety of their patient. The foyer had a wide screen state of the art 7-foot plasma television. On it, Soledad and Miles O’Brien were reporting the news. “Once again, we repeat, Jonathan Connor, son of President Connor, his fiancée, television actress Svetlana Natoya and White House chief medical aide Nurse Judy Denver have been kidnapped. Lets go to our on the spot reporter for the recap of events.

  “Thank you Soledad: At 1 a.m., Mathias Dwyer, a former doctor at the Beth Israel Hospital captured on closed circuit television here, broke into the La Boillevie restaurant and injected a small amount of banana concentrate into an organic milk container. This amount, though small, was enough to produce a significant allergic reaction. Jonathan Connor’s EpiPen failed to alleviate his symptoms and a stolen military helicopter collected the three. They have not been seen since then and no ransom demands have been made.” The television turned off with a snap.

  “Idiot!” Benjamin was staring at me, furious, arteries thumping in his neck. The blood transfusion had gone to his eyes. They were now vivid red.

  “Benjamin, come on.” I bit my lower lip nervously. I had never seen him this angry.

  “You’ve compromised the entire operation. We were supposed to switch Connor quietly and now, your face is plastered across every plasma screen in the free world. And by the way, what the hell happened to the Svetlana?”

  “She wasn’t part of the deal, so we shoved her out of the helicopter, somewhere over lower Manhattan.”

  “YOU DID WHAT? You know that I don’t like it when you improvise! You should have cleared it with me first. This is Peru all over again!”

  “Look. I told you about the Peru medical manufacturing lab already. I couldn’t be sure that Nurse Denver would get that specific EpiPen batch number, so I had to improvise and substitute several batches for water. You know how thorough I am.”

  “Thorough? You were sloppy and inefficient. Five people have died so far, and one was a 6-year old child. Suppose the company had done an international recall? Suppose Jonathan Connor had changed his EpiPen? The epinephrine would have worked, and he’d be safely in the White House, with everyone none the wiser! Why can’t you just do what you’re told, like Captain Langley?”

  “Captain Langley? Wasn’t he supposed to cut the feed to the security cameras at the restaurant? Really, this whole debacle is his fault. You should be yelling at him, not me.”

  I walked over to him, put a hand on his shoulder, and changed the pitch of my voice into a soothing tone as I continued.

  “Benjamin, it’s not as bad as it seems. It’s just a little hiccup. I could go to Mexico, and get plastic surgery. I just have to rearrange my face a little.”

  “I have something that can rearrange your face a bit quicker…”

  There was a sharp click. I hadn’t noticed when Nurse Denver behind me. I felt the cold steel barrel against the back of my skull, and as my brain exploded, I could only think that this night would go on forever.

  They’re right about what happens when you die. I hovered over my body, stunned, at my soul’s unexpected departure, and then I looked up. There was a white light. And as I floated towards it, I heard Nurse Denver speaking to Benjamin.

  “What are we going to do about Captain Langley? Dr. Dwyer was right. He should have cut the camera feed. Do you want me to get rid of him, too?”

  “Ah Nurse Denver, were you not listening? Captain Langley always does exactly what I tell him to.”

  Epilogue: It is the year 2010 somewhere in Mexico, a television is on. Miles and Soledad O’Brien have abandoned the sterile CNN presentation table for a warm country house living room setting. They both share the couch and around them are several plasma screens with live video connections to several political commentators.

  “Well Miles, I don’t know how our viewers feel, but I think that young Jonathan Connor is the most likely choice to succeed his father as president. I think that we are seeing the start of another political dynasty.”

  “Soledad, for once I agree with you.” Miles pauses and takes a sip of his McDonald’s coffee. “He’s got my vote. It was really romantic when he proposed in Times Square to White House medical aide Nurse Denver. Nurse Denver, as you recall saved his life in 2006 by escaping from her captors, and killing Dr. Dwyer, the man who had attempted to kidnap them. Eighty-seven people died when the secret medical hospital was gutted in the resulting fire, but Sen. Jonathan Connor escaped. After his father’s death in a car accident, Senator Connor has been managing the family billion-dollar fortune.”

  A deformed hand reached out and snapped the television screen off. A fire had reduced the fingers to two movable stumps of scar tissue. The man reached under his chair. A small cupboard opened. The hand took out a video-disc. He smiled. He’d watched it so often that he knew every scream as Nurse Denver unleashed her machine gun. They wanted no witnesses. No trace. No record.

  Captain Langley put the video-disc back into its cupboard. He’d wait until Jonathan Connor was president. After all, he was a patient man, and now, all he had was time.

  Anna Vocalizing Angst

  Laiadevorah

  ANNA SLAMMED THE DOOR and stormed out of her building. Like one of the Bellevue patients that sometimes wandered her block in the middle of the night, she muttered to herself and ignored the Park Avenue passersby. As she walked down the street she was like a child staring at her feet. But when she passed the bar and heard the music play she had to go in and sing. It had to be that way. She needed the cash.

  “Karaoke night again. No. I can’t do this. It’s too humiliating.”

  Welcome to another sleazy night at Hoolihan’s in the Empire State Building. The evening’s prize waited for Anna’s golden throat. She couldn’t help being blessed with such good pipes. Even after smoking two packs a day for years, she could belt that High F note stro
nger then Pat Benatar. But she couldn’t make enough money singing or doing voiceovers to buy cat food. She’d been trying for seven years now. Every audition brought new hope and new disappointment.

  “Goddess please help me get the hell out of this city.”

  Another roommate had just walked out leaving Anna with rent to cover, her third this year. Deena had been a sweet girl when she moved in. Her canvasses overflowed with pretty impressionist florals and nature scenes. After a couple of months she began painting over the pretty florals, adding skeletons and dark gothic towers. Deena had lost twenty-five pounds and her eyes had taken on that sunken lost look so favored by the fashion magazines these days. All of her things were gone. She had splattered black paint all over the bedroom walls and the rug was completely ruined. There was no note, no money and no goodbye. Anna suspected drugs.

  Isn’t that the way it goes? You think you’re a good judge of character but people always let you down. The city turns most of them into zombies. How could a normal girl expect to keep up the pace without drugs? She felt sorry for Deena but even more sorry for herself. Eleven hundred dollars rent was due in two weeks.

  Hoolihan’s was hopping. A bunch of well-dressed garment center salesmen sat around the bar and joked with each other while eyeing the door. Anna had the strangest desire to walk up to them and loosen their ties. Or maybe just pull real hard and choke the stupid bastards out of their misery. She waited in the corner of the bar for the emcee to get up and announce the contest. Tonight’s grand prize was five hundred dollars and a trip to the Bahamas. An idea dawned on her: Maybe I’ll go and never come back. I bet I can get a job singing in one of the hotels. She smiled at the thought of trading florescent light for the beach. The first girl got up and tried to sing Heart’s “Magic Man.” Her pitiful pitch had her booed off the stage within seconds. A group of balding buttoned up boys tried to sing “Summer of 69” with straight faces. But they were too busy giving each other high-fives to get the words right. Another girl did a passable version of Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams.”

  Anna drank two shots of tequila and surveyed the room. She walked up to the stage, chose her song and waited for the lyrics to pop up on the screen: And I said no, no, no Oh, Lady Day.

  She sang possessed with Lou’s vitriol and angst, shaking to that fine, fine music. All eyes were on her writhing torso and long legs as she belted her heart out and wove around the stage. Lost in the beat she felt alive for the first time that week. She couldn’t give a damn if she won. She tasted fire as she shared her passion with the tourists and the garment center hacks. She’d purposely picked an obscure tune. Even so, her charisma ruled the room. And it was all right. Hey baby, it was all right!

  She took her five hundred bucks home and started packing.

  Dickey Hartley’s Mallards

  TapasTonight

  WHEN DICKEY HARTLEY WAS EIGHT, his index finger was torn off after he stuck it into the moving machinery of his father’s old farm tractor. At his senior prom, his girlfriend informed him she was pregnant, and then left the party with another young man. In 1976, Dickey’s second-born child died in a freak accident, strangled by the cords of the mini blinds he’d recently installed throughout the house.

  Lately, things had changed.

  Bad luck seemed to be a thing of his past. It had been well over eight years since a wayward bullet had killed his best hunting dog, since his wife had left him and then came back, or since a hasty decision had led to the loss of a sizeable investment in a dot-com stock. At 52, Dickey Hartley marveled that life was finally smooth; his days of misfortune were done, it seemed.

   Today, Dickey sat peacefully in the old garage, plucking the glossy feathers off four mallards he’d shot at dawn. It had been an unusually chilly February morning for the coastal California town he lived in. After bringing a thermos of hot black coffee with him from the kitchen, he’d set up the old gas burning heater in the center of the garage where he sat with the dead ducks.

  Dickey held a bird in each hand, using his palms like impromptu scales to estimate the birds’ weights. He held each of their dead heads one by one in his hands and said a small toast; a tribute of thanks for giving up their lives for him. Although he was not a religious man, Dickey nevertheless closed his eyes, bowed his head and whispered ten Hail Marys over the birds. He never enjoyed the act of shooting the birds, so he justified their killing by ensuring that every bit of their flesh was eaten. Wasting anything would be disrespectful to the bird’s life.

  He’d once watched Sandra, his wife, throw away a package of chicken meat because it’d grown old and she said it had that rancid smell. He felt sorry for the chicken, having given up its life only to have the sum of its parts segregated into neat Styrofoam trays of thighs and breasts, then wastefully tossed into the trash. Dickey had retrieved the chicken meat and threw it on the grill out in the backyard. He made sure the meat was cooked through, gave it a shake of salt and pepper then fed it to his hounds. Now redeemed, the chicken parts would never have to see the day again. The act made him feel better, maybe even forgiven.

  In the cold garage, the old gas heater began to ping and blow warmth lightly into the air. Dickey took a sip of the hot coffee then picked up the heaviest mallard and started to pluck. The old wooden milking stool he sat upon was once his grandfather’s. The methodical task of pulling the feathers always soothed Dickey and he was able to let his mind drift easily with happy thoughts as he plucked. He remembered fishing trips and looked forward to the upcoming day of his retirement from the County Water District. He thought about the sweet pea seeds Sandra had planted in preparation for spring blooming, and the last time he saw his favorite cousin, Edward.

   Dickey focused on the ducks as a gentle draft swirled the teal and downy feathers at his feet then gently, quietly, shut the wooden side door to the old garage. He was peacefully plucking the birds, their plump bodies now barely warm in his hands. Dickey did not notice the door closing or that the three-inch ventilation crack he’d created by leaving the door ajar was now gone. He whistled a Waylon Jennings tune as he plucked. When Dickey picked up the fourth duck, he’d slumped quietly from the old milking stool to the floor below, his left hand still clutching the pliant bird.

  This was Dickey Hartley’s last misfortunate day.

  The Jelly Man

  Kohno

  MY FATHER WAS the son of English and Irish immigrants and he had a difficult childhood, growing up amid alcoholism, not much love and very little money. In turn he was not very easy on me. But when I was small I loved to hear him sing his little ditties: “Chattanooga Choo Choo,” “Deep in the Heart of Texas,” “Honey Hush,” “Sioux City Sue” and all the rest. He was not a very good singer but made up for his lack of tonality with enthusiasm. This love for music may have come from his father, who’d worked as a major domo when he came to the United States in the early 1920s. My grandfather also worked at the Russian embassy for a while before the Cold War, playing the piano. Maybe my love for music flowed from there, from grandfather, to father to son.

  Growing up, I remember listing to Herb Alpert on my parents’ Hi-Fi, and Antonio Carlos Jobim and Stan Getz on Felix Grant’s radio show when my dad drove us up to Beltsville Speedway for stock car races. One day I realized that I had music in my head: I could remember a song I had heard a week before and reproduce the bass line by sounding it out with “bah-dah-dum-dum” syllables in the right pitch or singing the lead guitar riff.

  I got a transistor radio and listened to “Hang on Sloopy,” “In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida” and the Beatles and the Stones. My older sister was a big musical influence, too. She got the first Alice Cooper album, the one where the guys in the band are on the cover wearing dresses. And she took me to Montgomery Community College one night to see Earl Scruggs, Lester Flat and David Bromberg.

  In high school I played guitar and I’d bring my acoustic to school. The case was handy for hiding a pint of Jack Daniels and a bag of weed and a pipe. I use to ti
e a measuring cup to a tuning peg on the head stock of the guitar and play out in the courtyard during morning break and at lunchtime for spare change. Sometime I played in the stairwells during class changes and jammed up the stairs and made everyone late for class. The red necks use to throw quarters at me as hard as they could.

  All this led me to some of my major musical influences, my friend Drew and his two older brothers.

  * * *

  The oldest brother was Dan and we called him Dan the Jelly Man. It seemed he had done so much in his life but failed at it all. He had been married but got divorced, he had been in the army but got kicked out, he was a Mercedes Benz mechanic but got fired, he rode with the East Coast biker gang the Pagans and was given the handle Little Lamb but then they stomped him and kicked him out, he had a played a really nice dobro for a while before I knew him but it got ripped off.

  I hung out with Drew because we both did stagecraft in school and because his folks didn’t care if we smoked dope and drank beer in his room. Dan was staying in the other bedroom. It was after his divorce. He would drown himself in beer and then swallow some Placidyls – hypnotic sedatives that came in green gel caps so looked like jelly beans. Hence the name: The Jelly Man. One green cap had the intoxicating effect that about six beers would have on a normal human being.

  I got to know the Jelly Man because he’d sometimes barge into Drew’s bedroom with some important information to share with us, like the excerpt from the Army Rangers Manual on how to make a weapon out of a piece of shit in the woods. He was mean when he was sober, mysterious when he was half-sober and pitiful when he was wasted. On a mellow buzz he would reminisce about the wild days living in Gaithersburg with his wife. He liked to refer to Gaithersburg as Sin City because all of the divorcees from the closer suburbs would move there out of shame. It was in Gaithersburg and its environs, Urbana, Fredrick and further he had contact with the Pagans.