SIXTEEN

NEW YORK CAB drivers react to dogs in strange, often voluble ways. In the home cultures of some cabbies dogs are food, not fares. The sociological implications of a cab ride to work always made me nervous. Nothing in New York is simple. Maybe nothing anywhere is simple, but I’ve been here too long to know. The rain made us considerably less desirable fares. However, a cab turned the corner and stopped before we’d been standing two minutes. Then he spotted Jellyroll, screwed up his face with repugnance, and waved us away from the door handle as if a dog on the floor of a car, a dented and swaying pollutant that didn’t even belong to him, represented an affront to his fundamental values. Why didn’t he see the dog when he stopped for us? It happens that way all the time. Is he half blind? Or did he figure we’d just leave the dog on the sidewalk and get into his piece-of-shit wreckage? On any other night, comfortable in my natural stance as a close yet invisible observer, I might have mused on the complexity of social interaction when so many cultures try to live together, but tonight it made me late, tense, and intolerant. That was no state to be in when one had to collide with Stockman Billingsly, as soon I must. Then there were no more cabs.

I glimpsed a flash of Calabash back there doing his job with the usual easy competence. I motioned for him to join us. Enough of this covert bodyguarding. The time for subtlety had passed. Now was the time to call in the firepower for all to see, everyone. Pine, Jones, Cobb, Palomino, Stockman Billingsly. Let them imagine the cost in casualties and property damage to fuck with us. I pictured with a chill of pleasure Calabash and me wearing crossed bandoliers, festooned with lethal devices, kicking in the studio doors, leveling our flamethrowers at their hearts and saying, “Okay, fuckers, you’re on Jellyroll’s time now,” and then Jellyroll himself would enter snarling, pulling a wagon loaded up with extra parabellum ammo.

Jellyroll was delighted with all the company, now that things seemed reasonably normal. We were off to work.

A Checker lurched to a stop. The driver, a bald black man, slid across the seat and rolled down the passenger window. “Hey, buddy, ain’t that the R-r-ruff Dog?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“Well, get in. The R-r-ruff Dog. Ho-lee shit!”

“Dey make TV here?” Calabash asked as we strolled into the studio. His innocent enthusiasm made me feel protective of him, my bodyguard. Sometimes I get sick of irony.

The “plot” was typical of the R-r-ruff mind. Jellyroll, wagging his tail with expectancy, approaches a bowl of ordinary dog food (it says “Ordinary Dog Food” on the bowl), sniffs it, and his tail drops dejectedly. Ordinary Dog Food. Then he lies down beside the bowl and puts his head between his paws. His “Owner” enters, sees his dog’s dejection and says, “You want the Full Flavor Dog Food, don’t you, R-r-ruff?” Jellyroll leaps up and barks. The Owner gives him a bowl of R-r-ruff, which he devours gleefully. Stupid, but no problem. Then, however, comes the reason we all were here for a makeup.

Jellyroll and his Owner cuddle and nuzzle lovingly after dinner, thus overcoming the audience with cuteness, moving them to purchase whole hillocks of R-r-ruff. Stockman Billingsly played the owner. There was a different “plot” about every six months, all brimming with cuteness. The present bit should have taken about two hours’ shooting. This was the second day. The problem was simple. Billingsly was a sour old sot who hated my dog, this job, and his own life. Jellyroll recognized his hatred and wouldn’t cuddle very convincingly, wouldn’t nuzzle at all. He was probably frightened for his life. Jellyroll loves to please; it’s easy to teach him things. In return for care and affection, he has agreed to make me rich. But I couldn’t make him nuzzle Stockman Billingsly.

The mood was instantly apparent. Long faces everywhere. director, camera people, including Phyllis, agency people, the client, even the people in the booth, looked like shipwreck victims. There he was, stage center on the shitty kitchen set in skeletal light complaining to two young interns assigned to take his heat and nod politely. Somehow, even through all that light in his face, Billingsly spied me. He made a big show of drawing forth his three-pound pocket watch and putting on hideous black-framed reading glasses that sat on his face like a pair of handcuffs. “Finally,” he said in stentorian tones. “I have plans for August.” He looked at the ASMs and laughed like an old rogue of a charming kidder, and kept on laughing until he forced the interns to join him. Pretty soon he’d start referring to Jellyroll as the “cur.” But tonight would be different, I told myself.

The director, a gifted stage director and a kind of friend of mine, came over to head off trouble. Kevin Malquist—he even had a director’s name—smiled at me and shook hands. “Like a duck’s back, Artie. Just like a duck’s back.”

“Sure, Kevin, no problem.” I introduced Sybel and Calabash and asked if they could watch. Kevin welcomed them affably and set up two folding chairs behind the center camera, from which Phyllis rolled her eyes at me. Calabash was awed. Jellyroll happily greeted all his friends on the way to stage center, but then he spotted Stockman Billingsly. If a dog can be said to turn on his heel, that’s what Jellyroll did. “Stay,” I told him.

“Can we get started?” Billingsly wanted to know.

The stage manager called places, and I took Jellyroll to his entrance. The stage manager called quiet, and Kevin called action. It went beautifully, until the nuzzling part. “Cut.” We tried it again. No nuzzling whatsoever. Cowering. He began to turn upstage toward me for some reassurance. “Cut. Let’s take five, ladies and gentlemen.”

Kevin motioned me aside. “Artie, isn’t there anything you can do? You agree that this isn’t working?”

“Sure.”

“Look at those guys over there—” The agency people and the product people hunkered in the corner, whispering encouragement to one another. “They’re going to start dropping dead one by one, the overweight alcoholics first. I’ve got to do something, Artie, fast.”

“He has to make up to Jellyroll, obviously. He has to pretend to like him. Then we can only hope Jellyroll buys it.”

“There’s nothing you can do? It’d be better if there was something you could do.”

“I’m sorry, Kevin.”

“I’d hate to think, Artie, that you’d leave my ass out on a limb just to make the old guy look bad.”

“I wouldn’t, Kev.”

“So what does he have to do?”

“Ruffle his ears, smile, the usual.”

Stockman Billingsly was a pioneer in the days of live TV. His claim to enduring fame is Dad’s Home! He played Dad in a family of nitwits meant to reinforce audience values and thereby sell them shit. Neither Dad nor Mom had any genitals.

Kevin called me onto the set. The lights burned the back of my neck. “Artie, show Stockman what you were showing me about dog handling. That was very interesting. Show him how you ruffle his ears. Know what I mean, Artie?” Kevin pleaded.

I demonstrated how to pet a dog.

“Will he bite?”

“Of course he won’t bite.”

“Now maybe there’s something in that, Stockman,” said Kevin, trying another tack. “Maybe Jellyroll feels that you’re frightened of him. If you would—”

“Excuse me, young Mr. Malquist, but you seem to imply that this is my problem when we both know it’s the cur’s problem.”

“If you call him cur one—”

“Pardon me, Stockman—” Kevin smiled as he grabbed me around the shoulders and led me away from the set. His smile vanished. “I’m asking you, Artie, I’m asking you face-to-face. Give me a break here. I want to wrap this up. I got a rehearsal tonight. I’m doing Danton’s Death at the fucking Public, and I don’t want to show up a wreck. Now please,” he hissed through his teeth.

“I’m sorry, Kevin, I’ve been upset lately.”

“I know. I’m sorry, too.”

“But he’s got to make up to Jellyroll.” I looked over at the money folks to see who had died. Nobody yet.

“Affection, that’s what we’re talking about, right? Maybe I can get him to do an improv.” Kevin hurried back to the hot lights. I followed slowly.

I told Jellyroll to sit, which he did, and Billingsly reached out to pet his head, only he held his other hand balled in a fist cocked and ready to punch Jellyroll should he bite the hand that petted him. Three-year-old children in the park toddle over to pull his hair and the mothers show no concern at all that their children might get mauled after one look at Jellyroll’s smiling countenance. Now he sat staring at this cocked fist and began to pant. He looked back over his shoulder at me with an expression that asked, “Just what is it you want from me?”

“I think you have to seem a tad warmer, Stockman. Try kneeling down to his level.”

“Kneeling?”

“Sure, try it.”

He kneeled. You could hear the poor bastard’s knees click all the way to Queens. But he kept his fist cocked! Jellyroll turned away.

“I’m sorry, but this is unacceptable. Mr. Fleckton, are you out there?”

“Right here, Stockman.” Fleckton was the account exec, whom I believed cultivated consciously his obsequious exterior to mask a heart like a crushed beer can.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Fleckton, but this cur is impossible to work with. I’ve been in this business for forty years.”

“But Stockman, that’s our spokesdog.”

Now we were down to it. It was that simple, and that’s what stuck in Billingsly’s craw. The dog was irreplaceable. Momentarily I felt sorry for the old man. But I didn’t want to temper my anger with sadness, so I pinched it off.

“Then I think you should consider finding a competent handler, I really do, Mr. Fleckton. Okay, let’s run it.” And he charged to his place. Maybe Jellyroll thought Billingsly was charging him, maybe he was more generally confused, but he stepped directly in front of the charging has-been. Billingsly tripped over Jellyroll and would have fallen had he not caught himself on the phony breakfast nook, which broke. He stood still and collected himself. Then he drew back his boot to kick my dog.

“Halt, motherfucker!” It was me. Every mouth in the room gaped open, and I heard on the fringes of my awareness a collective gasp.

“What! How dare you—?”

“You were about to kick my dog!”

“How dare you? I was not! My shin! I injured my shin! I was rubbing it!”

“Bullshit!”

“Artie, drop it.”

“I’ll sue you, Deemer! Barbarian! I’ll sue you for damages!”

“Damages? Damages!” I bellowed. “You haven’t seen damages yet, you wooden fuck! I’ll show you damages.” And I moved on him. Did I really intend to hurt Stockman Billingsly? Kevin, face contorted, moved to shield my victim, Jellyroll bolted, the camera people seemed to converge on me, but I only took a step and a half before being enfolded in black tree trunks. Calabash carried me away, my shoes two feet off the ground, and before he put me down, he said quietly in my ear, “Good ting you got a bodyguard. You a very hostile fellow.”

“That’s all for today,” I heard Kevin announce. Then, pointing to Fleckton, he said, “I’ll meet you gentlemen in the conference room.”

“Kevin,” I said as he passed, “he was going to kick Jellyroll.”

“That’s not how it looked to me.” He walked away.

Phyllis gently took my forearm and led me into the hall near the restrooms. “Artie,” she said, “you’re having some kind of crisis here. You’re in some kind of a rage. Are you in therapy?”

“I was.”

“Get back. I have names if you don’t. After that you need someone else to love. I’ll call you.” She patted my shoulder and returned to the studio. People glanced my way as they buttoned their raincoats at the street door. They looked at me as if I had been fiddling with myself on the IRT, that mixture of revulsion and fear.

“I guess people in the arts,” said Sybel, “tend to be a little high-strung.”

“The Theater of Cruelty.”

Sybel seemed more concerned than repulsed or frightened. I thought she’d walk out on me again.

Jellyroll sat down at my knees and looked up. “Are you in therapy?” his eyes seemed to ask.

He must have been watching my building. Sybel, Calabash, Jellyroll, and I weren’t inside five minutes when the phone rang. “You watchin’ it?” he asked.

Leon Palomino. They all had my number. “Watching what?”

“The news. Go turn it on.”

We stood around in a clot, watching. Sybel caught on first and gasped.

Renaissance Antiques was engulfed in flames. LIVE said a sign at the bottom of the screen. The roof caved in with an enormous cough, and the flickering red reflected on our faces in the darkened bedroom. Fire-fighting equipment covered Eleventh Street. From the Broadway side, pumpers arced jets of water, but the fire didn’t blink. “No, we can’t rule out arson at this time,” intoned the Fire Department spokesman.

“Did you do that?” I asked Leon.

“What, you think I’m callin’ you to admire another guy’s torch job? Look, I’ve been doin’ some thinking about the night Billie and my brother got killed. Maybe you want to hear what I saw the next night. Maybe you want to pass it on to Pine, maybe not, I don’t know.”

“What?”

“Not on the phone. I got two tickets to the Mets tomorrow. Me and Freddy were hopin’ to attend, but hell, he can’t make it. Gooden’s pitching.”

“What time?”

“One-thirty start, but let’s get there for BP. I’ll leave your ticket at the booth.” He was giggling, maniacally, I thought, when he hung up.

I told Sybel and Calabash.

“Jesus,” said Sybel, “you didn’t accept!”

“We’re off the hook!” I said. “We don’t even need to tip them off!”

“What?”

“They’re going to find Freddy in that fire!” What a beautiful prospect that seemed to me. I was so far gone that the exquisite irony—Freddy found in Billie’s refrigerator after a conflagration in the building she’d been spying on—made me giggle, a lot like Leon’s giggle. “We’re in the clear!” Events had leapfrogged over us and our photographs. We and they were now obsolete and, therefore, my logic went, safe from the cops and crazies.

“Do you think there would be anything left of him?” said Sybel.

“Refrigerators don’t burn up! That’s the beauty of it,” I actually enthused. “This writer friend of mine keeps all his originals in the fridge. We never even heard of any photos or any note from Billie. Nothing. Innocent bystanders.”

“I’m going home,” Sybel said. “Will you watch me home, Calabash?”

“Be my pleasure.”

“They’re going to question you about the fire, Sybel.”

“No kidding.”

“But you’re an innocent bystander employee. You didn’t see a thing. No corpse in the vault, as far as you know.”

“Will you shut up!”

“Yes.”

“What about that poor Stockman Billingsly?”

“Huh?”

“He’s going to lose his job, isn’t he?”