Sixteen

“I DON’T KNOW HOW YOU DO IT. One wife? She’s lovely, of course. But only one? It would be like having one … well … one — ”

“Car?” I suggest.

Chubbers bounded across the street as soon as I pulled into the laneway. He unabashedly covets my old Ford. And continues to offer me more and more cash for it. Today he upped the ante and proposed throwing in a wife. Diamond bl., perf. coupe, lim. slip., rear heat, tilt, loaded.

I said I’d consider it. I might need one after I tell Erika what I have to tell her.

“You can’t surpass that good old Detroit styling,” Chubbers is saying as he runs his hand along one of the signature tail fins. “They don’t make them like they used to, do they?”

“Amen to that, brother.”

I have this ’62 Fairlane 500. It’s a classic. Two-door sedan. Rangoon red with matching crush interior. Eight-cylinder 221 cubic inch engine. Fully restored. When all is said and done? It’s a total pain in the ass. I love it and all. Don’t get me wrong. But it’s on blocks in the winter and it’s in the shop most of the summer. So the actual time I manage to drive it is about two weeks of the year. Best not to tell Erika how much that is per spin. Erika has even refused to ride in it since I put in the new headers and turbo mufflers. She claims it sounds like a grease machine. Women. You figure them out.

It’s been in the garage this last time now three weeks. I got a message last night from my mechanic, Dieter, that it would be ready at noon. And I fell for it. It wasn’t, of course. Then again. It never is. There’s always the vacuum diaphragm assembly that Fedex misplaced in Oklahoma City, or the reverse servo piston that got tied up at Customs in Windsor. So I sat around his garage all day. It was as good a place as any to hide. And not think.

You should have seen everybody go nuts after Mandel’s wipeout. The press went into a frenzy. One guy even followed me into the shower. What was I supposed to say? They were there. They saw it. The man tripped and fell down. I felt like a twit repeating myself.

“He sure went into that wall in a hurry …”

“What a tumble!”

“NO, I DIDN’T TRIP HIM, NUMBNUTS!”

This afternoon also gave me a chance to rehearse what I was going to say to Erika. Although there’s no easy way to tell the missus she has to go on a penicillin diet. Which reminds me. I have to call Malcolm later. Somehow, in all the excitement at his office, I never did snag the prescription.

“Taylor came over to pick up the parrot last night. He’s a nice fellow. Eloquent. Erudite. Polite. And very caring of our feathered friends. I cannot believe that this Duck man is his father.”

“Neither can he.”

I heard via Taylor that Chubbers got off. I didn’t get the whole story, other than it was some kind of diplomatic immunity deal. Duck was hopping mad. And Tommy and Timmy must be devastated. Dollars to doughnuts they’ll be back at the chief’s house tonight changing the kitty litter … after they clean the gutters and scrub the toilets.

Once I’m inside, I dial up Deltech again and I’m put on hold. I’m starting to wig about Mutant Gene. I’ve called him twenty times to make absolutely certain we’re dancing to the same beat box. And they keep saying he’s not in. This is d-day. Where is he? After several minutes, the receptionist comes back on the line. With the dirty lowdown.

“I’ve been informed that Mr. Brophy is no longer with the firm,” she states.

I instantly get this bilious taste in my mouth followed by a churning in the pit of my stomach.

“You must be mistaken,” I gasp. “I want to speak with Eugene R. Brophy, he’s head of — ”

“Research and development. Yeah, I know. He doesn’t work here anymore.”

I hold onto the wall for balance. Do not panic. Repeat. Do not panic. “If you do see him, would you give him a message? Tell him to call Poet Springs, okay? I’ll give you my number — ”

“Poet Springs? Boyslost? You played at my prom. Immaculate Conception? I was head girl. Judy Amis. I paid you? We’re going back a few years now.”

It’s the strangest thing. My memory is terrible. I remember nothing. Until I run into a wall. Or I’m prompted. Then I remember everything. “Sure. That was a great night.”

And it was. Judy and a couple of her blossoming schoolmates ditched their dates after the dance and met us across the river. After we closed Hull, one of the nifties had this pool, so we all went for a skinny dip at about four in the morning. Drunk out of our skulls. “Glory days,” as my old pal, the Jersey Devil, refers to them. Glory days!

“I had such a crush on you guys. You were the best. I had all your albums. Did you know that you wrote a song that got me through a nervous breakdown?”

That’s my legacy. I should face it. Forget these foolish fantasies about writing.

“What are you doing now?”

“I’m … um … I’m in hi-tech …” I say. “A company called Drama-tech. Listen, it’s important I talk to Mr. Brophy, Judy.”

“Between you and me? Nobody’s ever treated like that. No notice. Nothing. I liked Eugene. He was weird but deep, you know. Then that gorilla, Emile, is tossing his ass out the door.”

I give Judy my number, and she promises to tell Gene if she hears from him. Then I sit down. Before I fall down. What is going on? How can they fire Gene? It’s his invention. Of course, I only have his word on that. I only have his word on all of this. What if he is a complete schizoid? Fifty gees. Plus the ten I loaned to Max. Erika will kill me.

Another call. That was quick. What is it about playing at somebody’s prom? Only it’s not Judy. It’s Max. Calling to tell me that he has borrowed another ten gees from his parents. And put it on Deltech. Another twinge in my gut.

Before he goes, he compliments me on the lob. High praise indeed coming from the Puppetmaster. I flip around the channels. It’s almost time for Humphrey’s afternoon update. He’ll have the inside poop. Maybe I’ve got nothing to worry about. Maybe Gene’s gone public and the stock is free-falling at this very moment. That would be nice. I could do a good news/bad news thing with Erika. I got fired, hun … and I have a dose … but I have come into some cash.

Initially I assume the remote is on the fritz because Rod First’s simpering baby face is on the News Network. He’s wearing a more conservative suit than usual and his arm is in a sling, but it’s Rod, all right. Standing outside the squash show court at the All Season’s mugging like a psychopath and being interviewed via satellite by Humphrey, who’s wondering if there have been any recent updates on Mandel’s condition.

“The last we heard was severe concussion, Humphrey. A complete medical statement will be issued later, but our inside sources tell us Dr. Mandel could be out of commission for a month.”

Rod delivers these sombre tidings with a fatuous grin glued to his elliptical face. He’s unashamedly basking in the spotlight of U.S. cable.

“You appear to be injured as well?”

“It’s nothing,” says Rod, shrugging it off bravely. And it is nothing. I was there. He must have had the sling sent over by the props department.

“I understand you have actual footage of the mishap, Rod?”

Rod is almost giddy now. Is it because Channel 10 is the only one with footage? Or is it because Humphrey Pequod is calling him by his first name?

“Yes. Luckily, I happened to be here taping an interview for my … um … I mean … our nightly news and thought I would get some b-reel when the unfortunate incident transpired.”

“If you could roll the clip,” says Humphrey, “and maybe commentate for us, Rod?”

They pick it up after the serve when I’ve got Mandel pinned in the corner.

“As you can see, they were having quite a spirited match,” Rod remarks.

“Indeed …” says Humphrey.

“Who is Mandel playing with, by the way?”

“He’s a local celebrity. A former rock musician. Dr. Mandel and him are close friends.”

Thanks for the plug, Rod. Don’t mention the name or anything. Or the name of the band.

“Okay, here we go,” says Rod. “It’s this shot, here.”

The lob is every bit as sweet as I remember it. What I didn’t see from my vantage point on the court, however, was Mandel’s mug when he realizes it’s not the dropper but Mister Lob. His eyes go all wide and his face is equal parts surprise and panic. I probably had the same look on my face when Erika told me about Mister Job.

My man, Stevie, couldn’t have been in a better position to capture what transpires next. The replay takes on this 3-D effect because as Mandel stumbles toward the camera, it looks like he smashes right into the lens — but it’s actually the glass wall of the court. Spectacular angle! And awesome focus pull. Mandel’s face squishes against the glass in this grotesque nostril shot, then Cecil B. De Stevie even has the presence of mind to do a crackerjack tilt downward until Mandel sucks hardwood.

“Oh dear …” says Humphrey. “That was awful. Can we see it one more time?”

“He fell into the wall pretty hard,” says Rod, still beaming. Pondering his soaring Q-rating.

“From that angle there, Rod, it appeared as though Dr. Mandel may have been tripped.”

“I thought he just fell. At least that’s the way it looked from where I was standing.”

Don’t waffle, Rod. You candy-ass! He did trip. You saw it, ferchrissakes!

From the replay, it does look like I tripped the wunderkind. When he lost his balance, he was going right past me. And my legs were wide apart. In case the spike artist got to the ball. Which he didn’t.

“Thanks, Rod. You’ve been most helpful,” says Humphrey after they run the tape one more time.

“Any time, Humphrey.” Rod offers up his best “I’m Network material, too” perma-smile, but the director back in Atlanta doesn’t linger on him long. He hurriedly cuts back to the studio, where Humphrey does his final wrap.

“There you have it … a freak squash accident has hospitalized hi-tech’s rising star, J.P. Mandel, and cancels the unveiling of the new Softcell–2000. All this hasn’t impacted negatively on Deltech stock, however. It’s up 1 and 5/8 in heavy trading. This is Humphrey Pequod here, for …”

Flick! Unbelievable. Not a word about Mutant Gene. All they’re worried about is Mandel. What a baby! He bumped his head. Big deal. I wonder if Mandel fucked up his hippocampus? Maybe the engineering dominos will start to fall and he’ll have flashbacks to when he was a nerd and he didn’t have a gazillion dollars, and a woman like Erika wouldn’t give him the time of day.

Another call. Please let this be Gene. Please. Please. Please. It’s not. It’s S.J.

“Saw you on the tube, Poet. Too fucking much, man. That was priceless.”

I thought it was a riot, too. I’m not sure, though, how amusing Erika will find it.

“Listen, you want to come to the gig tonight? Hang out.”

“I dunno,” I say spiralling into one of my anti-social funks. “I’m not sure what I’m up to …”

“That’s cool. There’ll be some comps and some backstage passes for you at the will-call, okay? You all right, Poet? You sound weird.”

“I’m fine.”

I have a few ale and play a couple of games of Scoreboard. Which is great, by the way. You hit a target, it gives you ten points. Not a hundred thousand, like on some of these new units. I also fire up the old Wurlitzer and crank out a few nuggets. This is the way rock was meant to be heard. Raw and scratchy. Honking out of a single speaker. The tubes rattling. The windows shaking. Not on some digitally sanitized CD compilation coming at you on a system that cost more than your first car.

As I’m waiting for the local news, I receive another call. I say a silent prayer that it’s Gene. But it’s only Taylor. Wanting to know if I tripped Mandel on purpose. Nice question. From my best pal. After I convince Taylor of my innocence, he gives me a Grams update.

“She took a turn for the worse.”

“I’m sorry, man.”

“We had to put her in the hospital. The only thing that seems to buoy her spirits is the fact that I’ll be singing on the telethon. She’s calling everybody. Relatives. Neighbours.”

“You’re tight with Rod,” I tease. “He should be able to pull a few strings.”

“I’m glad you find my misery so entertaining, Poet.”

“Speaking of your number-one fan, he’s on now. I gotta go. Call you later.”

Rod is doing his newscast from the All Seasons. He is milking this mother for all it’s worth. After he sets the stage with a backgrounder on the day’s events and plays the video in slo-mo, regular-mo, and every other fucking-mo he has, he throws to a sidebar piece on the history of Deltech and its illustrious CEO. Rod doesn’t miss a trick. He works everybody into the act.

Julia Meers, incidentally, told me Rod’s formula for a good news team: A congenial, girl-next-door co-anchor and a fat, jolly weatherman. Or as Rod refers to them: Perky and Porky.

He has Porky do his weather hit from the Deltech parking lot, and then Perky interviews Rod himself because he was an eye-witness. Every few minutes, Rod divulges that Channel 10 has a worldwide exclusive of the videotape. Never once does he mention Stevie’s name. And why should he? Stevie only taped the sucker, that’s all! Against Rod’s better judgment.

I’m about to shut the television off in disgust when they play my interview. I was wearing the snazzy new tennis ensemble that Erika bought me for my birthday. The whites cause some ghosting and my tan makes me look swarthy and my answers are altogether inane, but with some clever editing, I come off giving a decent sound bite.

My clip is followed by a press conference live from St. Vincent’s. A waspish-looking chief of staff named Rushforth is being interrogated by a pack of reporters. The man is direct from Central Casting. He looks like an afternoon soap actor. In the Macdonald Carey mould. Meanwhile, I can see my old buddy, Dr. Boopsing, hanging in the background. He may be the star of the after-hours emergency show, but here, prime-time, he’s relegated to a supporting role.

“We’re running tests. The usual. CAT scan, EEG, skull x-rays …” says Dr. Rushforth. “We’ll know more tomorrow.”

Nice to discover your place on the totem pole.

He runs into a wall, he gets tests. I run into a wall, I get thunder pills.

After the hospital press conference, there are other interviews: with the mayor, Deltech veeps, industry analysts, stockbrokers. Talk about your slow news day. Flick!

I hear some noises upstairs. Erika’s home. Maybe I’ll luck out and she’ll be in a good mood. I’ll let her kick back for a while before I go up. Let her have a glass of wine. Mellow out. Wait a sec! Footsteps on the stairs. What’s going on? Erika never comes down here.

“Have you heard about Malcolm?” she says, pacing back and forth. “He’s been arrested for possession of cocaine. With intent to sell.”

“Holy shit.”

“Some undercover agent posing as a patient arrested him this morning.”

The trippy biker. I knew there was something queer about Mr. Tye Dye.

“They found over ten grams on him.”

“That was probably his daily intake,” I say, putting myself between Erika and Scoreboard.

“You knew about the cocaine? And you didn’t say anything?”

“I was gonna. I didn’t realize until today how far gone he was.”

I don’t recall ever seeing Erika like this. She’s flushed and trembling. She knows something. The question is, what? The jukebox seems to be annoying her so she fumbles in the back for the on/off switch, can’t find it, and instead pulls the plug on Todd Rundgren. As he’s trying to find Leroy–Boy a woman.

“I got a call from the bank earlier, Poet. There was quite the withdrawal made.”

“Is that what’s bothering you? I can explain. I got a tip from Mutant Gene. He told me on the q.t. that this new Softcell thing of Mandel’s isn’t going to work. So I took some money — ”

“Sixty thousand dollars!”

“Yeah. And I sold Deltech short. You know what selling short means?”

“I’m not a goddamn idiot, Poet. I know what selling short means. Shit! What do you take me for, a goddamn moron?”

Erika is ticked off. I can tell. Two goddamns and a shit. She never talks like this.

“You’ve shown absolutely no interest whatsoever in our finances for as long as we’ve been together … I’ve had to do everything, from our taxes, to paying bills, to balancing our cheque book, but suddenly you decide to take sixty thousand dollars and play the market? Did you see what the stock did today?”

“It won’t go up for long, babe. Mutant Gene swears that — ”

“Your friend, Gene, was fired.”

“How did you know that?”

“And do you know why he was fired? Because he has a severe substance abuse problem, Poet. You’re getting your stock tips from a drug addict.”

“Gene’s clean. He told me — ”

“J.P. told me all about it. He also says you tripped him.”

“He’s a liar. And a cheater. Fuck him.”

“Watch your language, please.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You tripped him because you didn’t want the job and because you thought it would postpone the unveiling and maybe force the stock downwards, didn’t you?”

“Gee, Erika, you credit me with more cunning than I have.”

“Do I?”

“So when did you see Mandel? What did you do? Run to his side?”

“He called and asked me to stop by. You have your nerve accusing me of anything.”

“The guy’s a jerk, Erika.”

“Do you have anything else to tell me?”

Now would not be a good time to bring up the dose. That would be the last brick in the wall.

“No …”

Erika produces a piece of paper and hands it to me. It’s the prescription that Malcolm started writing out. Jesus H! How did she get her mitts on this?

“Sheila called me after she sobered up. I went over and picked her up at Malcolm’s. She found this lying on the floor in his office.”

“I can explain, Erika — ”

“I half suspected you might be fooling around. I chose to look the other way. Hoped you’d eventually grow up. I see now that’s not going to happen. I kept giving you the benefit of the doubt because I know what you’ve been through. But I’ve only got so much patience. How long do you expect me to wait around for you to get your act together? It’s been almost five years, Poet.”

“I know it’s been rough, baby, but — ”

“Life’s a game to you, isn’t it? When you’re not on the tennis court, you’re in here playing pinball. Watching television. Wasting any talent you might have had. And your friends? They’re a lot of help. Most of them are in worse shape than you — ”

“Well, yeah, but — ”

“When was the last time you took me dancing? Answer me that.”

Dancing? What’s this all about? Is that why Mandel is putting in the disco?

“When was the last time you took me anywhere? To do something I wanted to do?”

“There was that weekend in Montebello — ”

“When you weren’t playing squash with that cop, you were in front of the television.”

“It was the French Open, hun — ”

“I give up. I really do. You know at this very second I can’t think of one reason to stay.”

Erika starts to leave, but I grab her arm. “You’re my wife.”

BZZZZZZZ! WRONG ANSWER!

“Don’t call me wife, okay? Wife means we’re married. We’re not married. We’re playing house. Marriage is a commitment. You’re not mature enough to make a commitment, are you?”

“Is that what this is all about? Do you want to get married? Is that what you want?”

“I want to go upstairs, pack a bag, and get out of here. That’s what I want.”

“Erika, this is your house. If anybody leaves, it should be me.”

“No … you stay here. With your TV and your pinball machines and your jukeboxes. It would be cruel to separate a boy from his toys.”