Shape of the Final Dog and Other Stories (9781101600665) (13 page)

Rarely was I ever invited into the house for dinner, the parties and all that. Actually just once, the day before Christmas, for an eggnog and a gift. White socks. I kept them for a while, but never wore the things. I can't bear wool on my skin.

The upper thigh is achieved. I'm startled by something dark next to me. It's my shadow! More time has passed than I thought. I have arrived at the juncture. The eternal triangle, this
nest of spicery,
a little box of treasure to unlock. But
mar not the thing that cannot be amended
. Not that Gloria is a virgin, but what a glorious line! And as if on cue, I hear the cry of a passing bird, a crow I think. The
vile squealing of the wry-necked fife
. There's some bardolatry for you!

Paradoxically, in sleep, she welcomes me. Our pulses are in sync. I travel the firm soft roof of her tummy, the ticking organs beneath the skin; I can feel the angel energy of her blood thrumming through me. I am a silent tide on the heedless sea of Barkus's wife. Onward! I climb higher, extend my neck to look again. Beyond the sprawl of the yard, there's Barkus on the porch still talking to poor José, who is wearing a newspaper on his head like a pirate's hat. It's too far away to hear, but I bet the topic is a wage cut. If Barkus turned now he would see me on her breast.

The tissue of her nipple is like the skin of myself, no contradiction. For some reason I feel like crying. The idea that she would take me in I gave up a long time ago, but the dream of love does not punch a clock. The head is where I'm headed, her face is slightly tilted, the profile sublime, the golden clutter of her hair a crown. But I'm not so good of a sudden. Something flits and flutters within me. I feel wobbly, my balance is off. Could be sunblock. She's probably slathered with the stuff.
O tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide.
Always a reckoning to be paid.

In the hollow of her clavicle I pause for breath. Here is a spot the color of coffee, the size of a tear, her birthmark.
But it delights not me.
This project is done.

I climb to the knob of her shoulder and try to adhere. It's hard; I feel sleepy and sick. An association with me on top is what I came to achieve and I did!

To mark the occasion a little more Shakespeare would be good, but there's no time. Barkus can be brutal when he's upset. I need traction. He comes! Above all, I can't afford to take a fall. But the strumpet awakens—I go!

A relief to be on solid ground. But here's the stupid part: I've taken a tumble, landed on my back. Barkus is bigger than I thought. Now the bottom of his boot, the silver half-moon of the tap nailed to his heel, as am I, transfigured in the grass. For a moment I saw the sky.

H
e didn't have a choice. Ignog needed the job; he was on his knees. So broke he had to sell his dead father's cuff links to buy a ticket from LAX to Seattle and back. The Sisters of Vindictive Mockery had its headquarters up there.

Ignog would rather have done it on the phone, but Lazard wanted a face-to-face. It was Lazard who had given him his first job, given him his name, in fact. Ignog was not his original name, but Lazard deemed it a compelling byline, and you didn't argue with Lazard.

The Sisters of Vindictive Mockery was a monthly of critical discourse, politics, literature, and art, but it was the interviews, interviews with famous people who were famous for never doing interviews, that made the magazine. J. Paul Getty, Cagney, James Jesus Angleton (almost), J. D. Salinger, General Franco the week before he died, Madame Chiang Kai-shek at the age of ninety-nine. Ignog got to her through the laundry man.

He had done four years at the Sisters and six covers (a record), but the more he excelled, the less he was liked, plus he was slow. After taking seven months to turn in “The Imperial Dogma of Top-Down Doctrinal Pedophilia, War and Foot-Washing,” an anticleric screed of two thousand words, he was taken to a last supper at a café called the Pickle and fired. Out of indignation, Ignog snapped back with a book. An underhanded investigation on why NFL running backs who happen to be handsome tend to succeed, but before dying, usually of sclerosis of the liver, raised children who were losers and brats. It was his first and last book. Not a big seller, but it was well reviewed and led to higher ground.
Harper's
,
Esquire
,
The New Yorker
. The good stuff. Then things got bad. And Ignog did the bad stuff. Then no stuff. He hadn't worked in over a year.

He thought a lot about calling Lazard, but Lazard was mean and Ignog's pride was frail. Then, out of the blue, Lazard called him. The assignment was to interview one of the richest and most inaccessible eccentrics of the twentieth century. An old-school tycoon who loved money, airplanes, and big-breasted starlets. When he was alive, Howard was a household name, revered and feared, and now he was dead for thirty-eight years.

Kleenex. Howard was famous for his obsession with it. Lazard thought Ignog should call a shrink, get a medical opinion. A shrink would cost money. Make it up then, read a book. Ask him what he thought about 9/11. Who, the shrink? No, Howard! Write down what I'm saying. I'll remember it. No you won't. Lazard punched him on the shoulder. Write it down! Ignog started scribbling.

Find out why he stopped tying his shoes. Ignog figured it might have been the accident back in '47. After that Howard knew he wasn't invincible, lost his edge, stopped changing his clothes, didn't shave or cut his hair. Lazard wanted Ignog to interview people who thought it couldn't be done. What couldn't be done? All the things he did, the shit he invented when he was young. The wrenches, drills, whatever they're called—oil-sucking devices. And talk to his enemies, dig into his origins. You want me to go to Texas? No! Lazard didn't want Ignog to go to Texas. He wanted him to buy a bottle of Listerine. You smell like booze. On second thought, never mind the Listerine, do it on the phone. Lazard was rich but cheap. He had to be. But what he didn't want was stale, hashed-over, already told, dickhead facts. Unauthenticated, sensationalistic conjecture from unreliable sources would be fine. And he didn't give a damn about lawsuits either.

That was one of the advantages in interviewing a dead man. But the estate still had lawyers who could make money litigating posthumous claims. Fuck the lawyers. Here's a wacko who lived on a mattress in the middle of a hotel room surrounded by memos he wrote to Jane Russell's tits. But maybe you got a point, Ignog, the fucker ran a movie studio, he bought a city—get an explanation for that. Write down what I'm saying! I already did. And don't forget the beard. Went to his belly, right? Right. He never washed. So full of phobias he wouldn't let anybody touch him. Wouldn't touch himself. Never wiped his ass, is what Lazard heard. Had bugs in his hair. Lived on burgers and chocolate bars. Common knowledge, but Ignog wrote it down. As far as he knew, there had never been a successful interview with a dead man. Lazard said the Mormons were setting it up.

Bugs in his hair and his biggest fear was public opinion! Can you beat that? Ignog tried, told Lazard he had found out that the Spruce Goose was really made out of cedar. You sure? He said that if it didn't fly he was gonna leave the country. But it did fly. For seventy-two seconds. Right, then he locked himself away, shut the door. Richest man in the country died of starvation. He watched
Ice Station Zebra
a hundred and seventeen times, Ignog offered. Not to be outdone, Lazard said the man wrote over one hundred memos regarding Jane Russell's tits. Write it down. I already did. Fine. Clover Field, Santa Monica. Tomorrow at midnight. Be there. Lazard gave him a hundred dollars and Ignog caught the eight o'clock back to L.A.

Ignog was nervous; he didn't have a plan, an approach. Usually dying didn't work well for people, but for Howard it was different, and maybe that was an angle a journalist could use. This is more or less what Ignog was thinking as he waited on the tarmac at Clover Field at midnight the next day.

He saw it before he heard it. Two lights, then a third, in the sky, blinking yellow at the tip of each wing and winking white at the tail. It came in smooth and loud, hit the runway, ran to the end, turned, and taxied back to where Ignog was standing. The twin Pratt & Whitney radial engines suddenly got louder, then diminished to a thrum. Ignog stood there staring at it, an Abbott 71—cute, but butch, like a two-headed bulldog, low slung. The cockpit was at eye level, too dark to see the pilot clearly, but Ignog knew who it was.

A hatch slipped open. Ignog turned around and carefully backed into the opening. The bulkheads vibrated as the engines revved, the Bulldog swiveled, sprinted down the runway and into the sky, headed for the Pacific.

H
oward had been in the air, been in the Bulldog, for thirty-eight years. Whatever it was that kept the tank full and the oil pumping crapped out about once every seven months. Seemed to happen when there was an eclipse or some other celestial irregularity. These things irked him, but south of the border, he had his special places. This time he was north, this time it was Clover Field, not far from his old plant. But the Bulldog needed no maintenance; he had come down to pick up a journalist.

Howard wanted a burger. His functionaries were well paid and followed orders. He tapped the memos out in Morse code over the two-way with the long nail of his left index finger. This journalist would come aboard, hopefully with a burger. But the idiot didn't have one. Howard wondered whose fault it was and fought back a tantrum. He couldn't eat anyway, just wanted to touch it, a sniff maybe, then toss it out the window.

Ignog belted himself into the copilot chair. At a hundred feet and climbing, Howard introduced a subject, a test really: the Napoleon complex. He wanted to know Ignog's definition of it. A little man compensating for being small by acting big? Bingo. And what was it about Napoleon that made him so enticing to the inmates of loony bins? Ignog suspected it might be an invention of the movies, something to do with the outfit, especially the hat. He hoped that Howard liked that answer. Howard coughed. Encouraged, Ignog speculated that there were probably a lot more people who thought they were Jesus or Howard than Napoleon. He couldn't tell if Howard was flattered or wasn't; the man was not easy to read.

Approaching Catalina, a second question: Why did Ignog come into the plane backwards? It wasn't voluntary; Ignog was suffering the first stages of Parkinson's. Howard already knew this, but he wanted to hear Ignog admit it. He was glad to know somebody who walked backwards. Occasionally he did it himself, but didn't want it to be official. Was it random coincidence that pilot and passenger shared a disease, or was it fate? If the former, who would profit by it? If the latter, how could sympathy be avoided or exploited? It irritated Howard to be uncertain on this.

At least the passenger was a tidy fellow. Howard was not, but they weighed the same. Ignog was balding and small, Howard hairy and tall. Ignog's head barely reached the top of the back of the seat. The crown of Howard's narrow head touched the roof.

Catalina approaching. The Bulldog flew over the northern tip of the island, then back again, circled. Howard said they couldn't be seen, but they were there, below in the scrubland, eleven goats. Too dark to see, but Ignog took his word for it. Bill Grogan, a long-gone second cousin, had owned the old Catalina narrow-gauge railroad, Howard said, and the goats, back then, when there used to be more, were a hazard to the train. There was no train anymore, just those eleven goats were left, the mangy offspring of the originals. Interesting. And the Bulldog climbed.

Look behind you. Ignog did. He had already noted the clutter of jars full of yellowish liquid. He guessed it was just a way to get things started. You're here to continue my moment, Ignog, and it better not be a question. I don't take questions.

I would rather listen to a burro, a rooster, a sheep, scream in the slaughterhouse than the human voice, so address me without talking, write your questions on that pad you just got out of your pants.

Ignog's teeth chattered. It's cold in the Bulldog. A thin, two-buttoned coat and slacks aren't enough. But Howard isn't even wearing a shirt; just an old leather aviator jacket, unzipped, no pants. A wing-tip shoe on one foot, the other one bare.

Write down what you have to say, Ignog, then read it to yourself to make sure you got it right, then read it out loud to me. Understood? Ignog started to reply, but caught himself. He wrote
YES
on the pad, then pretended to read it to himself. Read it, Ignog! Ignog did. Ignog read it to himself, then said, Yes, understood. Okay, Ignog, let's get started. On the pad, Ignog wrote,
I have a tape recorder,
and then read what he just wrote, then spoke what he just read. Let's see it. He handed Howard the tape recorder. Howard had a quick look, dropped it, and stomped on it.

Watch this. Howard lifted his other foot, the shoeless one, to show Ignog a trick he could do with his toes. He crossed each toe, starting with the little toe, over the next toe, all the way to the big toe, without using his hands. How do you like that? Ignog was impressed and started to write. Just say it! I thought you didn't want me to talk. It can't be helped—and speak up, I'm hard of hearing.

Ignog asked his first official question: Is it true you can't turn on a light without first washing your hands? Of course it's not true. That's ridiculous. Did you just challenge me, Ignog? Simple question, Howard. Howard was silent, he wanted to think about this. He had to wash his hands before he turned on the lights—it was true. A thorough washing, both hands wrestling in the slippery wet soap, in the dark. No reason to turn on lights in the daylight. The idea of having to turn on the lights in a place without a place to first wash his hands made him nervous. So far it hadn't happened, but how would he manage if it did? One option was not to turn on the lights, remain in the dark till sunrise, or just not be in such a place. But why should he bother to explain this to Ignog?

Tell me, Ignog, are you honest? Yes, Howard, I am. Do I smell? Yeah, you do. Do I care? I guess you don't. You guess?! Do you know why I don't? Why you don't care, or why you smell? The latter. Because you haven't had a bath in twenty-six years?

It was phew city in the Bulldog. The cockpit smelled like cat piss. But if this was the price of admission, it felt like a bargain to Ignog.

Howard wanted to talk about surveillance and identity cards; he thought darkies, chinks, and beaners were victims who would turn on their betters if they were not kept an eye on. Howard didn't trust anything or anybody who wasn't Howard. He was an intolerant, overdeveloped excluder. Ignog was passive, underdeveloped, and excluded, and even in childhood could not abide intolerance or prejudice; yet here they were, flying through the night, their bodies almost touching, surrounded by Kleenex. A pilot and a copilot who couldn't fly. But they both believed zealots of unconditional loyalties were wrecking the world. A crocodile and a gecko together in the sky, if they are not upset, have something to agree on. And Howard mumbled a story to Ignog about Nevada Smith, the only friend he ever had. Nevada had an older sister, long dead, who was briefly married to Bill Grogan—the man Howard had called his cousin? Interesting. But the subject seemed to darken his mood, and Howard was silent again. But not the Pratts; the cockpit was noisy.

Now Ignog noticed another sound, a thin, piercing whistle—no wonder it was so cold, there was a little hole, the kind an incoming bullet would make, a sharp-petaled crown like a distended aluminum anus, next to the trim tab handle just above him.

Howard hoped Ignog would ask how he navigated, but he didn't. By the clouds, Ignog. What? Never mind. Howard and the Bulldog liked engaging clouds. There was a nice one a mile ahead, chalk on a blackboard, shaped like a reclining lady. The Bulldog suddenly banked and dove, tearing a hole through the middle of her. Howard screamed Wilko! and was nice again.

Were you surprised when they attacked us, Ignog? When who attacked us? You know who! We been sticking it to 'em since the pacification of Mesopotamia. And considering I'm part aviation and part skyscraper, I must know something about it—isn't that what Lazard told you? Tricky Howard, always a step ahead. You mean the Twin Towers? The Twin Synagogues is what I call 'em. If our enemies won't bend, we break 'em. That's how it's done. Finally they get fed up, retaliate, and we scream “Foul!” send in the troops, drop the bombs, and occupy. You know why? Why? Because we like to, that's why. I don't. Of course you don't, but the question is, how can you prevent it? I don't know, Howard, what's the answer? The answer is not to acquire bizarro clients in the first place, because when everybody gets to the second place we gotta go over there and kill 'em. (Great stuff, Lazard would have to admit it, Ignog was coming home with the bacon.) Remember Watergate? Of course. I had that man in my pocket, Ignog. Then he turned into a frog. You can quote me on that. You're talking about Tricky Dick? He wasn't so tricky; all he wanted was more money. He tried to make a deal with the Devil.