Stuffed (3 page)

“Garth, it’s a real one of a kind.” Angie slid the bird onto the table and her arms around my neck. “You did it again.”

“Don’t mention it, babe. Stick with me and—”

“You’ll cover me with dead things, yeah, I know.” She rolled her eyes around the apartment and nodded in the direction of a small, dusty TV under the wings of an owl. “I don’t think we’re ever going to graduate from that thirteen-inch color television.”

The comment stung, and despite my shrug Angie realized her faux pas. She grabbed me around the waist.

“Garth, you chase that old funk of yours outta here. You know I don’t care about the TV. I love you and our life together just the way it is.”

“If I could find a slightly used Sony Trinitron, cut back the gums, polish the teeth, put in a new tongue, repair the ears . . .”

“So where you taking me to dinner?” She wasn’t one to let me enjoy self-pity. Angie pushed me away suspiciously, hooking her caiman purse from the bear cub umbrella stand. Yup. The purse had been for Valentine’s Day.

“Besides . . . I’ve got some terrific news, something else to celebrate. You ready? Peter Van Putin.”

I nodded, clearly not knowing who he was. Or perhaps not remembering.

“Peter Van Putin, the HUGE fashion jewelry designer?”

“Ah.”

“They want to see my portfolio!”

“Whoa! And if they like it?”

“Then there’ll be an interview.”

I smiled, put my hands on her waist, and gave her a kiss. “Sounds like a done deal to me. Once they see the quality of your work, your designs, and, well, you in person . . .”

“Oh, stop snowing me.”

“I’m dead serious, sugar.”

“Well . . .” She almost blushed, but then turned suspicious again. “So, where is it this year?”

“I thought you liked last year’s dinner.”

“Kabul Tent was a delightful restaurant.” She inspected my hair, an unruly mane of dirty-blond locks that I barely keep caged with the help of Level Ten gel. She jabbed at it with her fingers, trying to tame it. “Really, I didn’t mind sitting on a cushion on the floor—”

“Eclectic dining.”

“Or eating goat chunks with my fingers from a giant communal pile of rice—”

“French food is so rich.”

“But did you have to pay for the meal with a vulture?” Angie gave my hair a cross look and folded her arms.

“They still have that bird.” I directed her to the front door. “It’s perched right over the hookah pipe. Otto!”

Tossing aside the curtain, Otto swept back into the living room, a cigarette clenched in his teeth. “Ve go?”

“No, we go, you stay.” I snatched the cigarette from his teeth and dropped it into his coffee. “No smoking in the house or I won’t let you work on the kitty cat.”

“But of course. I up the lock, eh?”

“But of course!” Angie and I called back as we exited.

Chapter 3

A
ngie and I met at a company Christmas party. Some pals of mine were trying to make it in the film business and had taken jobs as paralegals while they wrote screenplays and tried to find opus backers. Back in the early eighties, the big New York law firms were starved for paralegals to catalog warehouses of documents for the many corporate mega-lawsuits. At the time, my college degree landed me a dirt-pay job at a used-record store. But I had a dozen pieces of inherited taxidermy—my grandfather was a big-game hunter—and had struck upon the whizbang idea of renting the stuff out to make some extra cash. I advertised in free classifieds and, sure enough, found gainful employment for my lion, Fred, in a Broadway play that ran for three years. Fred’s not a huge lion, about seven feet long nose to tail, but he has a full mane. He’s mounted on a wheeled mahogany platform, on all fours and snarling at some imaginary threat. As youths, my little brother Nicholas, Fred, and I used to ambush trick-or-treaters. Bursting forth from the philodendron’s shadow, Fred’s casters wobbling and squealing frantically, we’d chase clowns, pirates, hobos, and ghosts down the driveway like a panicked flock of ducks. The result? Pinfeathers in their wake. Spilled Mary Janes, Pixie Stix, orange UNICEF boxes, and candied wax lips marked their flight path down the driveway. Hey, for scoring Halloween treats, it beat the hell out of going door to door. Our parents always wondered why no kids ever came by our place for candy.

Of course, my friends thought I was nuts trying to start a taxidermy rental operation, and they tempted me with becoming a paralegal too. Paralegals got cabs home, free food, business trips, and company morale parties with all the beer you could drink. At twenty-four, there’s not much more a male of the species could want from life. Except a female.

That’s how I ended up at a holiday booze cruise on a boat around Manhattan.

Amid the hubbub, I spied a particular female with a cast on her right hand and forearm. With her left hand, she was trying to assemble cold cuts into a sandwich. It was touch and go.

“Who’s that?” I asked a pal.

“Angie. She’s a temp. A jeweler with a broken wrist. Give her a try. If you like the smart type.”

“Smart type?”

“Does the
Times
crossword over a single cup of coffee. The rest of us can barely do the Jumble.”

I watched as this “smart type” cradled a paper plate on her cast and began to turn. Someone bumped her, she stumbled, the plate fell to the floor, and she stepped on her sandwich. I thought that was pretty funny until I saw her eyes begin to tear with frustration.

She began angrily slapping cold cuts onto a new piece of rye. I sauntered over, scooped up the squished sandwich from the floor, and cradled it in my hands.

“Kinda looks like one of those squirrels you find flattened on the highway.”

She turned and scowled at me.

“You know, the ones that dry up into a disk and you can pick them up and throw them like a Frisbee?” I dared a cajoling smile and flung the sandwich into the East River. It flew more like a clay pigeon that had been shot, separating into its components on the way down. She still wasn’t smiling, and this was my A material, if you can believe it. By all rights I should still be single.

“Yeah, well, here, let’s try again.” I gamely began making a turkey sandwich. “I’ll make the next one.”

“I don’t like squirrel meat.” Her green eyes bored into me disapprovingly. “Possum.”

“Possum?” I tried smiling harder.

“Make the next one possum,” she deadpanned.

So I made her a faux possum sandwich, gave her half, stomped on the other, and flung it starboard. It split apart again.

She rolled her eyes in disgust. “You gotta use more salami, with white bread and butter to cement it together. Make the next one jackrabbit.”

I was pretty sure she was stringing me along to make a complete fool of me. I’m used to having girls go “eeuuww” with this brand of persiflage, a shrewd pickup tactic akin to dropping a frog down a gal’s dress at the church picnic. What was I thinking? Youth is wasted on the wrong people, as they say.

But she was right: With butter, white bread, and a stable luncheon meat, the rabbit sailed like a Frisbee. What can I say? It was true love.

That was back in the days when we used to dance all night at parties and clubs. But you find that by your late twenties, your peers are nest-building. Career and the urgency of reproduction quickly subjugate frivolity. Parties, once fun, turn into wet-bar think tanks about insurance, personal finance, and real estate, with portfolio malaise the inevitable finale. And once the gang has kids, well, the most you can hope for are barbecues, awash in feebly disciplined children and talk of C-sections, day care, and bowel movements. So much for hootenannies.

Angie and I, oddballs that we are, have resisted the urge to spawn and replicate. We’re self-employed.
Free spirits.
The Brood Crew likes to imply that we care more about personal freedom than money, kids, and family. Which is true. So what’s wrong with that? We eat out whenever we want without having to get a sitter. To each his own, I say.

I’d made reservations for Angie’s birthday at Anglers & Co., a chic seafood place on Hudson where she’d always been keen to dine. But no sooner did we sit down than her eye latched on to the dandy Atlantic salmon mounted on the wall opposite her. She scrutinized me as I innocently checked out my menu.

“Don’t tell me—” she began.

“Good evening, Mr. Carson.” The manager interjected, hand on my shoulder. “Everybody has said how much better the new fish looks. You were right. The old one looked—”

“Let me guess?” Angie fanned herself with a menu. “Like it was baked over an open fire and spackled to a plank?”

The manager spread his arms. “Just so,” he chortled. “I’ve told the waiter no check, just tip, okay? Enjoy.”

“Garth, you’re impossible.” Angie grinned reluctantly, and immersed herself in the menu.

“Order anything you want.” I tried to suppress a marplot’s smile. “Drinks included.”

Then the birthday surprise. I took Angie dancing at Mud Bug Bar & Grille over on Third Avenue. It had a zydeco band that did Little Feat and Professor Longhair. It was a spacious, high-ceilinged club, decorated with discarded Mardi Gras float figures. Big barrels of peanuts sat at either end of the bar, and as the evening progressed, the floor became awash in peanut shells like some bayou roadhouse. Sunday night the place got pretty crowded, so much so that a trip to the bathroom for Angie was a fifteen-minute sojourn. It was during just such a break, while I was sitting alone at our table, cooling off with a Dixie beer after dancing, that an Asian man in yuppie duds and an effervescent mood settled into the chair next to me.

“Hi, Garth!”

I extended my hand slowly, no idea who this guy was. But he had a warm smile, a broad cheery manner, and looked like the kind of guy I’d like to know. Though the pro-shop togs made me wonder. So did his pencil-thin mustache, which wasn’t visible until he was up close. He smelled vaguely of cloves.

“You don’t know me. Jim Kim is the name.”

“Really?”

“I saw that piece on you in the
Times
a while back. About taxidermy rentals.”

“Good memory. That was over two years ago.”

“Yeah, well, I also know a guy who rented from you once.”

“You don’t say? Who?”

“A guy . . .” Kim snapped his fingers. “Can’t think of the name, imagine that. Anyway, I hear you have quite a collection of taxidermy. Do you sell as well as rent?”

A potential customer, so I figured I ought to be a little less guarded. “Yes, I do. Are you looking for something in particular?”

Kim smirked at me. “Some people I know are looking for a white crow.”

There was something odd in the way he said it, and I studied his face for some menace at his core but couldn’t cut through the veneer of his clubhouse bonhomie. Finally, I said, “Don’t see many of them.”

“I hear you just got one in.”

I sat forward. “Now, how would you know that?”

“A guy told me.” He shrugged. “You know, that guy, can’t remember his name.”

“Okay, so what’s this all about, Kim?” I locked onto his eyes a moment, hoping to fathom his intent in the dark recesses. Bupkes. “You’re obviously pulling my leg here.”

Jim clapped me on the shoulder. “It’s all about the white crow, and how these people want it, and how I think you ought to give it to them.”

“Give?”

Kim gave his mustache a sly rub. “It might be better to give it to them rather than have them take it by force.”

A vermicular chill wriggled up my neck and bounced around between my temples. “Just what are you trying to say? And what’s so funny?”

“I apologize, really, but it’s hard not to see the humor in it. That’s just my nature, my morbid sense of humor. And no, Garth, I’m not threatening you. I’m just giving you some sound advice. I’m on your side in this, really. Gotta go.” He gave me a jolly salute and slid back into the crowd.

I scanned the papier mâché Mardis Gras harlequins grinning down from the ceiling. Their
joyeux
now seemed
sinistre,
like they knew some dark secret I didn’t. Had Kim really just been there, or was he a specter, presage’s embodiment, like a Greek chorus? Or was he just some loopy apparition brought on by the planter’s punch and too many peanuts? You know, like Marley’s ghost brought on by a blot of mustard.

“Hey, pumpkin.” Angie plunked down next to me in the booth. “What’s wrong?”

I had a quick debate with myself and decided not to tell Angie about Jim Kim. I guess I thought it might put a damper on the evening, and it seemed like it would keep until the next day. Or until I could make sense of it. Sink her teeth into puzzle pie like that and we’d be up all night working it over. Remember the
Times
crossword? Can’t put it down until it’s done. So occasionally I have to try to steer her away from such things, if nothing else so I can get some sleep.

“Just tired, I guess. Shall we split?”

“Yeah, I have stuff to do tomorrow.” There are a lot of weddings in June, and Angie had to fill an order of eighty diamond solitaires and some pavé work. She does some of her own design, but her bread is buttered by piecework for art jewelers and the stray factory job.

Normally, we would have done the twenty-minute walk home, but since it was her birthday, we grabbed a cab and were home in five minutes. The front shop door is sealed and we always enter via the adjoining apartment lobby through two locking vestibule doors. There’s a side entrance into our apartment tucked back under the stairwell opposite the basement door. When we arrived home that night we displayed our usual wariness of dark corners and potential lurking muggers. New York isn’t so openly dangerous anymore, but you still have to have your Spidey Sense about you at night. Make out someone tracking you, either from behind or from across the street, and you have to take evasive maneuvers: Walk in the street between parked cars and moving traffic, where the tracking mugger will be shy of being exposed in the headlights. Or sometimes, if you just stop and stare him down, he’ll realize the element of surprise is no longer on his side and go looking for less-suspecting prey. If I’m walking with Angie, the thing to do is for us to drift farther apart so the hunter can’t corner us together, thus frustrating his decision about which of us to target. His window of opportunity is usually pretty small, less than thirty seconds before the quarry is back in the safety of the pedestrian herd at a well-lit intersection.

We instinctively drifted apart, checking the perimeter as we approached the door. They sometimes like to pounce while you’re preoccupied unlocking the door and collecting the mail. But the coast was clear. We entered the vestibule and stepped into the hall.

Safe at home.

“Hold it, hold it!” A husky, masked figure emerged from the basement door, which is usually locked. He was pointing a pistol at me, and my first thought was that it had to be fake. Then it occurred to me that a toy gun in New York is almost harder to come by than a real one.

Angie slid behind me, and I just stammered, my heart sinking like a gazelle surrounded by lions.

“I’ll kill you, I’ll friggin’ kill you.” Husky started waving the gun, I guess in response to the stupid grin on my face. I snorted, still grasping at the notion that this wasn’t really happening. I wonder if a cornered gazelle ever experiences denial. Then I turned and saw two more masked men. All of them wore jeans, black pea coats, and ski masks—must’ve been a sale at the army surplus store.

All I could think to say was “What are you, nuts?”

A hand grabbed me by my shirt collar from behind, and I hissed from the sting of fingernails scratching my neck.

“What’s that, pardner?” The voice behind me was raspy, vicious and yet mischievous, like a desperado robbing a stagecoach.

“You’re crazy, we don’t . . .”

I turned, straining against the grip on my shirt. The whites of his eyes turned red, and he smacked me in the head with a gun. Take it from me, don’t try this at home, kids—getting gun-whipped hurts like sin.