Whale Music (26 page)

I have made a friend for life. Barney here (I have named the dog Barney) thinks I am the finest human being ever assembled, he gazes at me with endless admiration and affection. Don’t tell him that anyone could have done what I did, which was to march into a corner grocery store, pick up a box of Gainesburgers and toss some bills in the direction of the proprietor. In Barney’s eyes I have performed a major miracle, he has decided to become the first of my disciples, the rock upon which I shall build my church.

My neighbourhood is vanished, I am in a strange new place. Here we have liquor stores and pawnshops. Here we have a sleazy bar. It’s hard to imagine such grottiness existing so close to the home of Henry Mancini. Well, perhaps I should begin my detecting. The sleazy bar is called
PETE’S
. No doubt Pete is a friendly and affable sort. He will wipe at his counter and offer wisdom. I instruct Barney to remain outside. He gives me a doleful look but obeys, hunkering down and applying a long tongue to the tufts of hair sticking out from between his doggy-toes. I push through the front door, which is about a foot thick. Inside exists a sort of Arctic twilight and timelessness. Over in the corner is a couple, a man and a woman, you can tell by looking that they have been nursing their beers since 1956. The man is staring forward, his brow knit in furious concentration, you expect him to snap his fingers and shout, “By god, Einstein was wrong!” A fat bald man sits all alone at a table, chuckling to himself, likely remembering the one fun
time he had, in a motel room in St. Louis with a woman named Emma. In one of the bar’s darkest corners is what appears to be a small pile of garbage, which has climbed up onto a chair and ordered a shot of house whiskey. And at the bar, perched on one of the high stools, is a black lady. She is dressed in a short skirt and a tank top. Her breasts have given up all hope. Behind the bar, serving her, is Pete. Pete, far from being a friendly and affable chap, looks like he is just waiting for his axe to come out of the shop, so he can get back to mass murder.

Still, I’ve come this far. I belly up to the bar, smile politely at the lady, offer greetings to the publican. Producing money, I request a beer, which is set down in front of me with all the ceremony of oxidization. This is a place for businesslike drinking, I can see that. I toss it down industriously, belch and ask for another. I take a few sips of the new bottle and then announce, “I am looking for a girl.”

“How’s about me?” the lady demands.

“I am searching for a particular girl,” I rephrase.

Pete stares at me, places a cigarette between his lips. The smoke curls up and forces him to squint his eyes. Too bad. His eyes were the one feature that were even vaguely humanoid.

“She stands about this high,” I draw a line some five feet from the grungy ground, “and has long golden hair. Her eyes are green, except for when she is angered, at which time they become tinted ever so lightly with a steely grey. Many people would call her mouth oversized, her lips too full, but this is a matter of taste, I myself would differ. She is slight of build, small-breasted, well proportioned.”

“Haven’t seen her,” Pete snaps.

“Her name is Claire.”

“Means nothing,” says Pete.

“Imagine a wheatfield. A hot summer’s day. Overnight a carnival has appeared, a Ferris wheel and hot-dog stand. A clown races around doing pratfalls.”

“Oh, yeah,” nods Pete. “She was in the day before yesterday.”

“Did you speak with her?”

Pete has softened somewhat, and, if you are willing to grant a certain amount of latitude regarding facial expressions, the man is smiling. “Yeah. She was interesting. Nice kid. Mad as shit, though, at some guy named Dorcus.”

“She told you this?”

“Shit, yeah. Said he was a flake. Right nuts, she said. You know this guy?”

“He has certain problems, no more than many people. He is willing to work with a
qualified
doctor, although he will have nothing to do with Dr. Tockette, who is to medicine what Babboo Nass Fazoo is to organized religion.”

It’s as if someone has set a match to the small pile of garbage in the corner. It begins to zizz and cackle, bits leap with spark, and the small pile of garbage is a raging conflagration. It tumbles to the ground and makes its way towards us. The garbage begins to talk now, it has a voice like Jiminy Cricket on evil drugs. “Bappoo Nass Fatsoo? Ooo are be zaying dis?”

The black lady and Pete the bartender make it obvious that I’m in this alone. Still, self-sacrifice is one of the finer options open to us sometimes morally bankrupt human beings. I address the garbage. “I mentioned the name Babboo Nass Fazoo.”

The small pile of garbage giggles. “Pie me a dringkt.” “Hmmm?”

“Pie me a dringkt,” the garbage repeats. “Bappoo Nass Fatsoo!”

“Unfortunately,” I say, “I was just now on my way. I don’t really have time to dally.”

“I am gnawing where iss dis garl.” The small pile of garbage giggles again. For an instant my heart
(all right
, damn it, I have one, but it is fat and riddled, useless at best) plunges towards my sandals as I imagine my dear sweet Claire being devoured by this small pile of garbage. Then I realize what it has said. “You know where she is?”

“She are bean docking do me.”

“She are bean docking do
you?”

“Pie me a dringkt.”

“Pete, may I have one of whatever it consumes?”

The garbage shoots skyward, lands on the stool beside me. At close quarters the features become just barely discernible. This is an old man pretending to be garbage, and a fuzzier, groatier little gnarly-noob I could scarcely imagine. Aha. Once again you have been quicker than I. Just remember that you haven’t been waging nuclear war on your brain cells for twenty-odd years. “Why,” say I, “it’s the furry little four-flusher himself.”

“It’s Bob,” says Pete.

“I beg your pardon?”

“That’s his name. Bob.”

“Bawp,” the small pile of garbage, the erstwhile spiritual leader of millions, says rather proudly.

“Oh.” I feel like one of those old Jews who, on a crowded sidewalk in downtown Cleveland, suddenly recognizes the Terror of Treblinka. Still, something softens within me, I even let the small pile of garbage grab my hand. “Pleased to meet you, Bob.”

Bob is presented with a small shot of house whiskey, which I pay for and which he tosses back with alacrity. “Yezz,” he says, “I are bean docking do dis garl. She are bean zaying dat she are needing an jawwob.”

“Jawwob?”

“Verk.”

“Employment!”

“Emblowymund.”

“Yes. Talk on, Bob.”

“I am zaying dat I gnaw where iss jawwobs. Danzink.”

“Danzink?”

“Danzink.” Bob lifts his arms above his head and shifts some portion of his anatomy lewdly. “Viddowt der close.”

“Danzink viddowt der close.” I furl my brow, pull on my beard. “Danzink widdowt der close.”

The black lady offers elucidation. “Stripping.”

“Yowzers!” I grab Bob as if to throttle him, but the worm-eaten material in which he is wrapped comes away in my hands. “You frizzy little pervert.” It would be a simple matter to rid the universe of the Babboo, and I am seriously considering it when Barney sends up the most horrendous of howls. It’s like Hollywood producers are auditioning for
The Hound of the Baskervilles
.

“That your dog?” Pete asked.

“He is with me, yes.”

“Something the matter with him?”

“How should I know? I am not a canine mind-reader!” Even as I say these words, however, I become possessed of a sudden clairvoyance. I lift the small pile of garbage off his stool. “Is there another door?”

Pete points helpfully towards the back of the room. He seems to enjoy this cloak-and-dagger stuff. “Are you kidnapping Bob?” he asks. “I don’t think you’re gonna get much for him.”

“Goodbye.” I waddle towards the fire exit carrying Bob—I’d tell you how the little mung smelt but I don’t have time—I hit the heavy door with my rear end and as it opens I see Kenneth Sexstone
et al
rush through the front entrance.

I am in an alleyway, Barney is waiting, we set off at quite a clip. In a few moments I am exhausted and close to throwing up. On the bright side, however, we seem to have escaped for the time being. I set Bob on the ground, lumber over to the curb for a long sit-down.

Barney takes a whiff of Bob. His muzzle cringes so badly that his ears shake. Still, Barney knows how to make the best of a bad situation. He cocks a leg. And listen to what comes out of me, it is unpractised and rusty, but listen to it bloom in the air like a fat and deformed flower, listen to it hit the sidewalk like a drunken cripple. There you have it.

I have laughed.

The last time I laughed—oh, I recall, recently I chuckled at a story my mother told, my grandfather tumbling out of a tree or something—but the last time I really laughed, goofily guffawed, the last time true Bozoisms came pouring out of my bloated carcass, was some years back.

Daniel came to me as I lay in my bed. I pretended I was asleep, but this is useless, you can’t pretend you’re asleep to your own brother, or he may well do what mine did. My brother disappeared to the kitchen and came back with a turkey baster full of ice-cold water. “Is Des asweep?” he wondered aloud. He gingerly lifted the covers, exposing my suetty tuckus. “Is wittle Des asweep?” I felt the nozzle of the baster being inserted between my hams. I woke up quickly enough.

“Go away! Leave me alone! If I were you, Daniel, I’d scamper into beddy-bye, too. It’s fucking
dangerous
out there!”

Daniel said, very calmly and reasonably, “Desmond, let’s go out and get a drink.”

“You desire drink? Hail one of the nubians.”

“No, man, let’s go to, you know, a bar. A
saloon
. Let’s talk to gimps missing body parts. Let’s go see a peeler. Let’s
go.”

“No.”

“What, you gonna sleep all your life?” Daniel hauled me out of bed—he was a strong son-of-a-bitch—and threw me into my clothes. He stuffed me into the tiny seat of his sports car, he drove downtown, found the sleaziest bar imaginable. He gave me bennies and juice, an old stand-by, very effective nonetheless. The peeler looked like a motel room in need of a paint-job, but Danny turned all wild and woolly and full of fleas, hooting and hollering, and she put on a very good show. Danny reached into his back pocket, removed the Confederate Army cap, rammed it onto his head. “He is here!” he announced to the world at large. “Let the bells ring out and the banners fly, Stud E. Baker is standing by!” Danny climbed up onto the rinky-dink platform, he danced with the now-naked peeler. Things went well until he licked one of her breasts, at
which point she screamed demurely and two Sumo wrestlers tossed us into an alley, the moonlight and trash. We laughed until tears came streaming out of our eyes, and then we got up on our hands and knees and crawled away, my brother and I.

Barney, Bob and I are headed downtown. I think that Barney is hoping he is not spotted by any of his little arfy pals. Bob, the erstwhile Babboo Nass Fazoo, has a peculiar way of walking, his hip joints are awkwardly canted, forcing him to swing his little twiggy legs about in semicircles. He also possesses a club foot. In short, the man is crippled, although I never noticed that while I stayed with him in India.

I am attempting small talk. “So, Bob, how have you been?” His response is unintelligible. No matter, the answer is obvious. He is what Momma and Poppa Roundworm point at as they tell their children, “If you don’t eat your dung,
this
is what shall become of you.” Still, the man seems reasonably happy.

Now I believe he has asked how I’ve been. “Me? I have not been too well,” I offer, “but I think I’m on the upswing.”

“Under bruvver?”

“He is likewise none too well.”

We are entering the downtown area. Los Angeles has a downtown, and despite the fact that no one ever goes there, it is quite crowded. This is the scuz capital of the nation, it sickens me to think that this is where I shall find Claire.

I need Claire, even though she will complicate my life unbearably. My heart doesn’t stand a chance here, I am sending the snivelling coward to war, it shall not avoid pain, injury and possible death. What choice do I have?

We have entered the city. Winos, whores and young people apprenticing to be winos and whores line the sidewalks. Bob is gesticulating at the multitudes, his palsied hands administer benediction. Wait, wait, I am in error, he is pointing to an edifice. A huge sign proclaims,
LIVE NAKED WOMEN
. Across the face of the building, an artist’s rendition of a live naked woman. The genitalia are obscured behind an exploding fireball. Lettering inside the tiny nova announces that there are no less than twenty-six girls, dancing nonstop, furthermore, they will even climb up on tables to do this dancing. My sluggish blood is on the simmer. I am resisting the urge to throttle Babboo Nass Fazoo, but none of this is really his fault. Claire, I suspect, asked him where she could find employment as a live naked woman, her thinking as regards nudity, sexuality, etc., is a touch addled.