The young man put Effinger down. He reached under the counter for a pack of Marlboros and a lighter, propped his feet on the counter, lit up.
“That’s a bad habit for a young person to take up,” Arthur said.
“I been smokin’ since I was six. Why don’t you get a trap?”
“I’ve already got a Havahart trap. He won’t go in it, she, whatever it is. I think it smells me. That’s what my wife said anyway. She read it in a book.”
“Is it in your yard?”
“Well, sometimes.”
“Is it scared of you?”
“I haven’t done anything to it.”
“Cats can be like that.”
“Yes they can,” Arthur said. “They can be pretty vicious, too.” He leaned up against the counter and fiddled with a small stack of chartreuse Post-its, turned and looked at some red swordtails and neon tetras, then examined a thumbnail casually. “I was attacked by one when I was a child. It stalked me when I was sitting in a car and I had to roll all the windows up to keep it from getting me. I told my parents all that beforehand.” He looked up at the young man. “And they just laughed. They weren’t laughing after that cat attacked me, I can tell you that. They were painting my little legs with a bottle of iodine.”
“Aw yeah? Your daddy kill the cat?”
“No he didn’t,” Arthur said. He hoped his disappointed tone was plain. He still didn’t know why his daddy hadn’t killed the cat. It looked like his uncle would have volunteered to kill his own cat himself, but he didn’t. He looked at a python in a cage. It had eaten some animal and there was a lump in the middle of it. He wondered what it was: gerbil, rat? It seemed his daddy had been dead almost forever now. He still thought about him often, though, and about the times he’d taken him fishing for fat bluegills at Tunica Cutoff. They used to catch piles of them. They’d pee on you when you took the hook out. He remembered how good they were to eat, fried in black iron skillets and grease in the kitchens of houses built on stilts. Old rotted boats dark and silent under shade trees. Life had been a lot simpler then. Fewer choices.
“How’d it get you?”
“Had my back turned. Making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”
“I can come over and probably catch it but it’s gonna cost you.”
“How much?”
“Fifty bucks.”
“Fifty bucks?”
“Fifty bucks.”
“That seems high. How do you propose to do it?”
“Little help from a little friend.”
“Can you come over in a couple of days?”
“Okay. Twenty up front, thirty when I hand him over.”
Arthur stood there, reaching for his billfold, feeling half angry and somewhat helpless, wondering where this could possibly lead. All this trouble and for what? One little lost animal saved from the world and hundreds of thousands of others being bred at the moment. Was it worth fifty dollars of his money? Wouldn’t it probably just tear up the drapes and the rugs and piss on the furniture? Would it change anything between him and Helen? Probably not. She was just like she’d always been. Horny.
“You’d better call first,” Arthur said. “My wife likes to sleep late in the mornings.”
8
Frankie was working a crossword puzzle and waiting at the corner of Danny Thomas and Beale for a guy to come walking by on the sidewalk and make a sign to him. People were going by him and standing around him and horns were honking and the exhaust fumes from pickups and vans and cars and buses and carriage horses were rising up into the cold air. A guy down the street selling flowers wasn’t having much luck.
There were quite a few people out and he figured a lot of them were Christmas shopping. A man walked by on the sidewalk, looking directly at him, then made a fist and lifted his thumb, and a black stretch Caddy eased to the curb next to Frankie while the back door opened. He got in and pulled the door shut. The car began moving and the dome light came on. The inside was upholstered in soft leather and the driver was hidden behind a pane of black glass. A tall and stern-looking man wearing glasses and a very good suit was sitting across from him with a slim aluminum briefcase on his lap, and it was obvious that he was not in a good mood. Beside him on the seat was a tiny long-haired dog, black and white, with a polka-dot ribbon around its neck. The little animal showed him its teeth. Frankie chuckled.
“What’s up with the guard dog, Mr. Hamburger?”
“Never mind the dog. What’s up with you?”
Frankie smiled and leaned back.
“Well, I don’t know. Lenny said you wanted to see me.”
Mr. Hamburger never took his eyes off him and watched him in a way that made Frankie think of a rattlesnake he’d seen Anjalee watching on a Discovery Channel documentary just before it hit a mouse at blinding speed. But anybody who’d gotten his dick mutilated by a gasoline-powered posthole digger would probably stay in a bad mood.
Mr. Hamburger raised the lid on the briefcase. The little dog peeked in as his master lifted an eight-by-ten photo from it. He presented it.
“Does this man look familiar to you?”
Frankie took the picture and studied it. An ordinary photo of a man with deeply tanned skin, short black hair neatly combed, with just a little gray showing. He handed the picture back. No hard question there. But why the question?
“What is this, Mr. Hamburger? We both know who that is. You gave me that picture at the Como steak house.” He glanced sideways. The glass in the car windows was very tinted.
“Who is it?”
What the fuck? He wasn’t sure now what to say. He didn’t want to say the wrong thing. Something was definitely wrong but he decided to try to make light of it.
“What’s this, some kinda joke? Okay, ha ha, it’s real funny. Where we going anyway?”
Mr. Hamburger just kept watching him, holding the photo. The car kept moving smoothly, past the big buildings that stood in their own shade, as if somebody had wired all the lights on green just for them. Frankie looked out the window, then faced Mr. Hamburger again. He was starting to get just a little bit scared.
“Had a haircut lately, Frankie?” Mr. Hamburger said.
“Nah, I ain’t had no…” He stopped. “What is this?” he said.
“Mr. Leonardo Gaspucci got a haircut the other night. A quick one, they said. You know anything about Mr. Gaspucci’s haircut, Frankie?”
He knew he was in some deep shit now, but not why. He hoped to get enlightened but he doubted he would. There was probably no way to jump out. The doors were probably locked. And just then they all locked. Click. He swallowed hard.
“Look, Mr. Hamburger. I don’t know what you’re talking about, okay? I did what you told me to. Did I do something wrong?”
Mr. Hamburger put the photo back inside the briefcase and closed the lid. The little dog that had been peeking inside the briefcase turned its attention back on Frankie and began showing its teeth again. Mr. Hamburger petted it, stroking the long strands of black hair and white hair sensuously, slowly, careful as a lover. Frankie wondered if they were heading to the loop for I-40, and if so, where they were going. Either Arkansas or Mississippi. Why in the hell would they be going to Arkansas or Mississippi? Unless they were going to the steak house at Como again for a juicy T-bone. He couldn’t imagine why they’d be going to Arkansas.
“Would you like to know who Mr. Gaspucci is, Frankie? Would you be interested in hearing that?”
He turned his reptile eyes upon Frankie again and waited, but there were no questions showing on his face. There was only one thing to say.
“Sure, Mr. Hamburger.”
“Mr. Gaspucci was getting a nice haircut the other night, Frankie. The works. Shave, talc, nose and ear trim, the whole deal. Then somebody came in and messed up his haircut for him. I mean messed it up big time.”
“Who’s Mr. Gaspucci?” Frankie said softly.
“You wouldn’t last long in Chicago, Frankie. Mr. Gaspucci is not the man
in the photo. That man’s still walking around selling people posthole diggers. I saw him, Frankie. And I paid you a lot of money to make sure I wouldn’t.”
Frankie laughed, snorted momentarily, then chuckled. His grin got wider and he chortled, feeling a lot better now, realizing now that Mr. Hamburger was just playing around with him and that it would be over in a few more minutes, and he would let him out somewhere, and he could find a bar, and get a drink that would calm his trembling hands. Lenny never had told him that Mr. Hamburger pulled practical jokes. Maybe this was the way they did it in Chicago. Scare the shit out of somebody and then have some belly laughs about it. He’d have to tell Lenny about this over drinks. Maybe even this afternoon. Wouldn’t that be fun? Oh how they’d howl. Call for another drink. Eat some goldfish from a bowl. He could call up Anjalee and tell her to get ready and take her somewhere nice. Maybe Huey’s, close to the Peabody. They had a very good burger and you could get a drink. Shit, maybe even try that Automatic Slim guy’s place.
“That’s a good one, Mr. Hamburger, that’s a real good funny one, reminds me of my uncle, used to tell me stuff all the time and I’d believe it, and I mean dead serious like you, too, he had this great delivery—”
“Shut the fuck up, Frankie. Mr. Gaspucci was involved in the vacuum cleaner business. He was a regional sales director for the Hoover company and he had a kid in school at Yale, pre-law. Want to know why he was getting a haircut?”
Frankie couldn’t say anything. He just had to listen. The little dog kept snarling silently, showing his nice clean white teeth.
“He was getting a haircut so he could go to Hoover’s annual motivational conference in Phoenix. He was going to meet his father there and they were going to play golf. Golf, Frankie. Mr. Gaspucci and his father got together six times a year and played golf. They played at Palm Springs, at Hilton Head, at Doe Island, at Old Waverly down in Columbus. It was their thing. It was what they did together. You know why? Because Mr. Gaspucci senior had busted his balls to get Leonardo into college and get him graduated with a business degree and you know what he did to get the money, Frankie? He sold Hoover vacuum cleaners. He sold them door to door, Frankie, and he even worked weekends and eventually, once he had his degree in business, Leonardo joined the Hoover company himself and rose through the ranks to become a regional sales director. They had a great relationship and they never had quarrels and they loved each other as much as men can, and you know what you did to Mr. Gaspucci, Frankie, you want to know why you’re in here with me and the man in the picture is out there and why we’re riding through town like this, you want to know what you did to Leo Gaspucci?”
The car was speeding up onto the ramp to cross the Mississippi at the Hernando de Soto bridge. To Arkansas. Frankie was almost weeping into his lap because he knew he wasn’t going for a big fat Como cut off a cow now. He said: “What?”
“You fucked up his haircut. You were supposed to whack this asshole who just happened to vaguely resemble him. Who wasn’t supposed to arrive for twenty-seven more minutes. Yet you were seen waiting outside, drunk like a dumb-ass. And if the cops grab you, it’s only a matter of time until they’ll have me. Because you’ll squeal.”
“But he came on in! Please! Mr. Hamburger, wait a minute…I just thought he was…kinda early!”
They were on the bridge now and going faster and Frankie could see the gray arched and riveted steel beams above them and the rails of the bridge flashing by. Far below lay the father of waters, slow and muddy, wide and ancient, home of monster catfish, alligator gar, Mark Twain, and mid-South TV’s favorite fisherman, Bill Dance. Mr. Hamburger didn’t seem to notice, only reached inside his coat. The little dog growled gently, low in his throat, but not to the hand that stroked him.
“Sorry, Frankie. We’re not responsible for what you thought.”
9
The bar at Gigi’s Angels on Winchester was dim, the clientele all men, drinking heavily in heavy smoke. The floor was full of empty chairs. Two tired-looking dyed blondes, a little lumpy and stretch marked from childbirth and naked but for silver panties, were moving slowly on the stage, under faint blue lights, to Chris Rea. Lighted candles along the back mirror and among the bottles flickered whenever the door opened. The sailor had spoken nervously to the bartender about the possibility of a woman and when she came out from behind a door the sailor saw her look at him. She winked and he nodded and took a big drink of his beer. In a moment she was near his elbow, luxuriant in tight black, a low-cut sweater that showed her breasts generously, her hair loose and shiny like some kind of animal’s mane.
“What’s your name, sailor?”
“Wayne Stubbock,” he told her. “Are you really…?”
“Really what, Wayne?” she said as she signaled to the bartender. “Be cool, okay? I got caught on a couch by some cops one time. In another place I used to work.” She smiled again and pulled a pack of Camel filtereds from her pocket. The bartender set a clear drink with ice, a slice of lime floating, at her hand. “Thanks, Moe,” she said. He saw a nice bracelet on her wrist, twisted silver. He had a small headache again. But he didn’t have them every day. They were probably nothing.
“I mean…God. Are they all like you in Memphis?”
She reached for a book of paper matches on the bar and opened it and tore one loose, tossing her hair back before she lit it, then scraping it hard across the little rough patch and pressing on it with her finger so that when it flared and she lifted it flaring and smoking to her mouth he could see himself twinned in her eyes for one brief flash of recognition. Her lips pulled on the Camel, sucked back the smoke, and a small hole opened in her mouth and blew out the match. She winked. And in that moment he was in love.
“I’m a country girl. You just got lucky ’cause I quit my other job.”
She looked away from him for a moment and reached for her glass, lowered her eyes and sipped from it, then before she took another drink and set it down cast her gaze around again as if sizing up the night.
“How long you in town for?” she said, and eased her hand over onto his knee and then lifted her eyes to his and looked into them with an unwavering stare. She had big eyelashes. It was almost scary being next to her. He had never seen one like this up close.
“Just one night,” he said. “Tonight.”
“Well, hey, I guess you better make some hay while the sun shines, huh?” She lowered her voice. “What you want, baby?”
She moved her hand higher on his leg and up the inside of his thigh. There was heat in her hand and she was still smiling at him and sipping at her drink and holding it hanging beneath her fingers, swirling the ice around in the glass with an unstudied grace. The thought of being naked with her made his heart start beating hard against his breastbone, just like it did whenever he got ready to fight.
“I want to marry you,” he said, before he could stop himself.
She didn’t laugh. Her eyes got solemn and she stopped swirling the drink. She raised her chin.
“Where you headed?”
“Indian Ocean.”
He thought of all the iron and steel moored at the shipyard in Pascagoula, and of all the welds in the hull and the weapons racked in the armories and the food frozen in the freezers and the planes with their folded wings and the sleeping pilots and the sleeping marines and sailors and even of the sleeping Sea Sparrow missiles in their beds. He didn’t know what would happen to him if he jumped ship and stayed, but already those kinds of thoughts had begun to form.
“You want a blow job?” she whispered. “I’ll give you one for fifty that’ll make you remember me on your deathbed.”
He had to think. Something was wrong because here was this thing happening. She wasn’t supposed to be here. She was supposed to be back on his daddy’s farm with him, and he’d build the house on the back pasture his father had set aside for him, next to the lake he’d fished in as a boy, under the wide shade of old post oaks. He’d teach the children to fish for walleye and they
’d ride the tractors with his father. Summer lawn-mowing while she hung out clothes and cooking burgers on a charcoal grill. Buying all the toys at Christmas. They’d have love in the afternoons.
“I want to marry you,” he said. “I ain’t never…what’s your name?”
She took a drag on her cigarette before she answered, and let the smoke come out with her words.
“Anjalee,” she said, and seemed a little sad. “But I don’t need to marry you, sailor. You better take a blow job while you can get it.”
She drained her drink and motioned for another one. The bartender looked at Wayne, and she nodded. When the drink came, she picked it up and got him by the arm. He didn’t know what was going on but he followed her, around the end of the bar into some darkness and through a black door that she locked behind them, just the two of them in the dark and then climbing up stairs where scant light showed above, and onto a landing that headed a hall of doors. She took him into the third room on the left. One candle was burning beside a condom packet on a table next to a small bed where a nice black leather coat was lying. She closed the door behind them and dropped quickly to her knees and, setting down her drink, opened up the front of his trousers. When he came in the rubber a few minutes later, panting like a hot puppy with his trousers down around his shoes and his fingers wrapped in her hair and barely standing he was moaning and groaning and crying and dying because he knew she would leave him and find another.