The Bialy Pimps (6 page)

He saw the situation for what it was and resolved right then and there to give Little John whatever he wanted for free, forever.
 

Captain Dipshit struggled through the lobby toward the counter, dragging the dwarf. There was much huffing and puffing and swearing. None of the customers seemed to care, or even to notice. The realization made Captain Dipshit’s skin crawl. Just like the Private Dancer. Just like the guy who had broken the mirror with the ashtray. There was something wrong here, all right. Where was God when you needed him?

At the front of the room, Mike realized that the customer/parasite would probably want to order food, so once the team gained the register, he switched into customer service mode.

“What?” he said.

In one Gestalt leap, it occurred to Captain Dipshit how odd and how wrong this all was, and with it came the realization that he shouldn’t be here. He should leave. He should run home. He’d just talked to God, he had a headache, and he had an alcoholic dwarf attached to his leg who nobody seemed to see. Nobody was helping him. Was he just supposed to order food like nothing was wrong?

No,
he thought.
I can’t let them win.

“I guess I want a bagel,” he said. “But make it fast. I have a situation here.”
 

Mike, who was enjoying said situation, was in absolutely no hurry.

“We have many varieties of bagels,” Mike said. “Allow me to list them for you.” He adjusted his baseball cap first in one direction, then in the other. He rubbed his chin.
 

“Egg,” he said.

“Whatever’s healthiest.”
 

“Wheat.”
 

“Whatever’s healthiest.”
 

“Bialy.”
 

“That’s what I want, roast beef on bialy,” said a voice from below the counter. “I own this fucking place!”

“Anything for you,” said Mike, “or just the sandwich for your crotch?”
 

Captain Dipshit inhaled sharply as if punched. Then he looked down, shook his leg, then looked down again. It was as if he thought he had something on his shoe.

“There’s a guy down there,” Mike explained.

Captain Dipshit looked at him.

“Right there,” said Mike, pointing.

So this
was
really happening. That was good. Or was it? Was it better to have a drunk homeless dwarf attached to your leg and not have anyone offer to help you, or to not have a drunk homeless dwarf attached to your leg at all? It was the eternal question.

“Maybe you can help me,” said Captain Dipshit.

“I
am
helping you.”
 

“I mean, with this... situation,” he said, nodding at Little John.

“He’s hugging you. That’s how we roll around this place. I’m barely restraining myself from hugging you right now, in fact.”

“Where’s your manager?”

“Why?”
 

“I’d like your manager to throw him out,” hissed Captain Dipshit, finally losing his cool. “For christ’s sake, look at him!”
 

Mike leaned forward and looked down. Little John looked back up at him, smiled a black-toothed smile, and unhooked an arm from around the Captain’s leg for long enough to wave.

“That’s really prejudiced, sir,” said Mike. Then he added, impromptu, “You disgust me.”

“I’m a customer here,” said Captain Dipshit. “And this... man... is bothering me.”

“I own this fucking place!” yelled Little John.

The Anarchist, who had overheard the exchange from behind the corner, walked over. “Hey, Mr. Bingham,” he said.
 

A look of utter befuddlement crossed Captain Dipshit’s face. The Anarchist saw it and explained succinctly, “He owns this fucking place.”
 

But it couldn’t be. That didn’t make sense. The red-haired man was a campus nut, a guy who begged for nickels and had once chased him with a whip and thrown pickles at him. They were obviously screwing with him.
 

The smell. The filth. The odor. The insanity.

His headache was getting worse.
 

Darcy, who was at the make table and who was sporting prominent cleavage, walked up next to Mike. She leaned over the counter and extended her hand. “Nice to see you again, Mr. Bingham.”

Little John shook her hand. “You have huge tits,” he replied.

“This isn’t the owner,” said Captain Dipshit. “This is a campus bum.”
 

“Can’t he be both?” said Mike.

Captain Dipshit rolled his eyes. “This is ridiculous.”
 

Little John punched Captain Dipshit in the testicles. “Fuck you, hippie! I’m three foot six, I’m thirty-six, and this is my motherfucking restaurant!”
 

The Anarchist, Darcy, and Mike were all smiling mildly. None of this was fazing them. And really, why would it? The woman dancing in front of the mirror, her front smeared with dried blood. The guy who belted out classical rock music on the street. Hadn’t he even seen a fat man walking around wearing a pair of Mickey Mouse ears, a thong, and nothing else? Par for the course. Was it really that inconceivable that Bingham’s owner was a smelly megalomaniac homeless dwarf?

Yes.
 

But somehow it wasn’t. Somehow, on some level, it made sense.
 

In a vortex of evil, anything goes.

Captain Dipshit looked at Little John, who was covered in what looked like oil stains. Where had he been sleeping last night? He had a crusted-over cut on one of his hands. What had he punched with that hand?
 

The fiery red hair. The fiery red beard.

Maybe he’s Satan.

Okay, that wasn’t funny.
 

Captain Dipshit felt his heart speed up.
No,
he willed it. Losing his cool would be letting them win. If they were going to act like nothing strange was happening, so would he. He’d just do his business, leave, and then never come back. He’d had enough bizarreness for this lifetime.
 

“Forget the sandwich,” he said. “I’ll just have iced tea.”
 

“We don’t have iced tea anymore,” The Anarchist told him. “The iced tea guy was an uptight prick. He came in here and whined and whined, so we told him to go away and then Rich took a past-expiration ham over to his house and dropped it down his chimney, yelling, ‘Bombs away!’”

Mike turned to the Anarchist. “Really?”

“No,” the Anarchist said, chuckling. “We didn’t even know the tea guy’s name.”
 

Captain Dipshit, who didn’t need this extra information, switched his request to hot tea.

“I don’t know whose chimney it actually was,” the Anarchist told Mike. Mike nodded.
 

“Or just a teabag to go. Like, just hand it to me and I’ll make the tea later.”
 

Little John punched him in the testicles again. “You’d better pay for that!” he said. “This is my place and those are my fucking teabags!”
 

Captain Dipshit doubled up and fell over. From the floor, looking up, Bingham / Satan seemed to tower over him. Something fell out of his beard and hit Captain Dipshit on the forehead. Captain Dipshit wiped it frantically away and stood back up without missing a beat. None of the employees had reacted, so he’d better not react much, either.
 

“One dollar,” said Mike.

“Here you go.”
 

“This is a library card,” said Mike.

Captain Dipshit took the card, gave Mike a dollar, and began tapping his foot. It was a good feeling. Familiar. Regardless of whether he was in a den of evil or not, he was beginning to get impatient. He fell into it, looking around with short, birdlike movements. Satan Bingham wouldn’t win this round.
 

Mike handed him a teabag.
 

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a regatta,” said Captain Dipshit with a small, uptight nod of his chin. He bent to address Little John. “And it was nice to meet you, Mr. Bingham.”
 

Mr. Bingham feinted at striking his testicles again. Captain Dipshit flinched.

Don’t let them see you sweat,
he told himself, regaining his composure. He turned and walked mildly to the door. Once he reached the door and had opened it mildly, he mildly refused to look back. He turned mildly onto the sidewalk along High, and ten seconds later felt the evil pull of the place begin to release him.
 

He was still hungry, but he wasn’t going back in there. No way.
 

Maybe he could grab a microwave burrito from UDF down the street. It wouldn’t be very healthy, but at least he’d have some sustenance, and he felt like he needed sustenance after what he’d just been through.
 

There was a noise to his rear. He looked over his shoulder and caught one glimpse of a fat man wearing Mickey Mouse ears, a thong, and nothing else strolling gaily toward him before turning and breaking into a run.

He didn’t stop at the UDF to get a burrito. It didn’t feel safe to stop running until he’d put at least another block between himself and Mickey.

After several minutes of all-out effort, he collapsed as he crossed Chittenden, gasping for breath, his heart pounding like it was trying to escape. He didn’t sit. He fell. All of the strength went out of his legs and his momentum pitched him forward. Some basic survival instinct still conscious within him forced his arms out in front to break his fall, but it was unnecessary because an old woman walking a Jack Russell terrier cushioned him sufficiently.
 

The collision was ugly and undignified. Captain Dipshit’s head hit her hip and she folded in two, sitting down somewhat on her rear but mostly on a drink carrier she had been holding that contained four thankfully cold drinks from a coffee shop called Java Jive. The Captain accordioned on top of her, his head in her crotch. The rest of his body, stopped by his head, was too out of gas to go rigid and flopped like a bean bag in a partial somersault, his back rolling up the woman’s body, his butt over her left shoulder, his legs limp and heavy. He settled on the concrete with his face up, staring at the blue sky, as the woman’s terrier bit anything it could reach.

When she regained her breath (nothing broken, nothing bruised; the annihilated drinks had gotten the worst of it), the woman yelled, “Bootsy! Attack!” Then she stood up and began kicking Captain Dipshit, who was spent, nearly unconscious, and completely beyond the ability to protect sensitive areas.
 

“Get away from me!” she shouted, backing away. She shuffled through her small handbag and removed a small black vial of pepper spray, which she pointed at Captain Dipshit.

“I don’t know you!” shrieked the woman.
 

Captain Dipshit tried to reply. He couldn’t. He considered himself lucky to be breathing. He smoked pot constantly, considered potato chips and French fries to be a major food group (potatoes were from the earth, after all), never exercised, and had just sprinted all-out for five blocks. His adrenal glands were out of adrenaline and his blood was acidic enough to burn a hole in steel. He lay on the concrete, legs still in an untidy jumble, and tried his best not to die.
 

“What do you want? My purse? You can’t have it!” she yelled, brandishing the pepper spray.
 

Captain Dipshit breathed heavily in agreement.
 

“Molester!” she yelled.

Captain Dipshit gasped for air in apology.

“Poliiiice!” she shrieked.
 

Captain Dipshit indicated that there was no need for such rash action by staying motionless and attempting to remain conscious.
 

Fortunately for the Captain (and as observed by the Captain), weird things happened constantly on High. Few people had even noticed the sprinting hippie, the yelling woman, or their collision, and fewer still seemed to think it was their problem. Police remained notably absent. A pedestrian on a cell phone stepped on Captain Dipshit’s outstretched hand as he was walking by, swore in surprise, and snapped at the Captain to watch where the fuck he was going.

Captain Dipshit, managing at last to bring his heart rate below 110 percent of its theoretical maximum, untangled his legs and continued to gasp.
 

The old woman sprayed him in the face with the pepper spray and hurried off.
 

It was five minutes before Captain Dipshit could breathe normally again, and much longer than that before he could begin to open his eyes. In the intervening time, he attempted to splash his face with water from one of the woman’s ruined Java Jive cups (which made the burning worse) and then slumped back against the wall of a building he could feel but not see. He then began to ask the passersby for help, explaining that he’d been maced and left for dead and that he needed help because the naked Mickey Mouse could be here any second. But as soon as he’d told the story, he heard a slurred voice thirty feet to his left begin telling the same passersby that Stuttering John from the Howard Stern show had sodomized him with a toilet brush and that he needed six bucks to hire a limo back to his mansion in Beverly Hills.
 

Between the sprints, the fear, and the pepper spray, the next forty-five minutes passed in a series of start-stop clips of disjointed consciousness. He seemed to fall asleep, wake up. Fall asleep, wake up.

A full hour later, as his head and vision began to clear, he discovered that someone had covered him in a ratty blanket. He’d also somehow collected sixteen cents in the Java Jive cup that he was still clutching.

Using the building for support, he got to his feet and brushed himself off.

His legs were still uncertain and his eyes were still watering profusely, but he noticed that in the tussle, the old woman had dropped her sunglasses. They had horned rims and were studded with rhinestones, but when he put them on, the sunlight took on a pleasantly muted quality that didn’t hurt his eyes so much. Plus, with them on, nobody would think he was crying.