Louis
Shalako
Why,
why, why.
Why.
That
was but the question…
***
Making love to Amy on the waterbed was almost funny.
It worked all right, better in some ways when he let her get on top and work
her own magic. She giggled at the look on his face as he peered over her
shoulder and saw that white little bum, everything naked, all that smooth,
creamy skin, and not a stitch of clothing between here and there. His neck
ached from bending his head to get at her nipples, and there was a good long
session where they did the sixty-nine, with Amy on top. How many long and
lonely nights he’d spent since puberty.
She took great delight, indulging her power as a
woman, in making him come while she stared deeply into his eyes.
The internal waves of the bed, water sloshing back and
forth had their own logic. After a time, she fell off to one side, collapsing
beside him. They stared into each other’s eyes.
Mark wanted to talk, not his favourite thing but it
was better than letting her get away.
“Do you believe in free love?”
She laughed at the solemn look on his face.
“Have I ever sent you a bill?” Putting a finger across
his lips, she shushed him. “Come on, Baby. It’s my turn.”
His face went all wooden.
“Come on, Amy. I’m trying to be serious here.”
She smiled.
“Poor Mark, so full of questions—” Such sad, beautiful
eyes.
He shook his head. If she really worked at it, she
could almost make him angry.
“All right. Shit. Here goes. An actual statement.
Rather than a question—”
Her face went still and soft, listening. Really
listening, just this once, and making a point of being seen to be listening.
“I’m in love. With you. How did this happen—how did we
happen?”
“So.” She stroked his face, just looking, feeling, and
wondering. “Well. I don’t know—”
“I love you.” It was true.
It did happen.
It had
happened.
That was all that really mattered.
The trouble was that it hurt so much to say it, and
all of a sudden the darkness swept over him and the tears came out of nowhere.
Mark Jones cried like a baby, for probably the second time in years. Suddenly
it all became clear to Amy. This was not a child, this was not about a toy or a
candy or a blanket. This was about a grown man who’d had enough. This was about
keeping it inside for far too long. This was about injustice, and people not
caring, and this was about hunger and loneliness and despair and good people
dying and bad people thriving and all the shit
that happens in life.
It was about the two of them and no others. A man and
a woman and all that that implied.
It was about truth, and trust, and being vulnerable no
matter how strong you were. He probably did
love her. Nothing else could have wrung this moment out of such a man.
Any man, really. Any life-long bachelor…none of the
men she’d interviewed had been stupid, exactly, far from it in most cases.
“Aw.” She stroked his brow, rising up and looking down
into that squished-up raisin of a face.
It was about finding somebody.
Almost anybody, when it came right down to it—
He had reverted or something—he was like a three
year-old kid, all crushed and bruised inside.
“It’s okay, Mark.”
She held him to her breast as his strong body heaved
and spasmed and she marveled anew at all the pain people held inside.
Especially the artists, the drummers and the painters
and the poets and guys who played the horn.
But maybe not for much longer.
No
longer.
Not
until death do us part.
This one was a keeper.
***
Mark, in all the excitement of getting work, and
having Amy there, plus all the comings and goings of Duke, Maude and other
party animals, had completely forgotten.
He had a phone call to make. Amy was in the bathtub.
It was with some small measure of pride that he took out his pen and note-pad
and left her a note. Opening the file folder Keeler had given him, he took the
phone number down by writing it on the back of his hand. It was pissing down
rain, and he left the papers at home, all together in one place. He left a
quick note for Amy—they were short of tea bags. She wasn’t a big coffee
drinker, and there were one or two other things he could think of. Now that he
knew he’d be working, he almost had a surplus, an abundance. That one came out
of nowhere.
He’d be back in half an hour, but she would most
likely come out of the bathroom and find him gone. He was a bit shy about
sticking his head in there and giving her some bogus explanation of where he
was going. The odds of getting out of there again anytime soon were slim.
As for the phone call, she didn’t need to know about
that just yet.
Locking the door on account of people like O’Hara, not
to mention thieves, it was a rough neighbourhood. Amy was alone in the bath.
Then there was Duke, who had a way of presuming his welcome, and then there was
Maude, showing up with a plate of something half the time, and doing it at all
times of the night and day.
That one was a bit different.
 |
| N9LXI, (Wiki.) |
The night before, Maude had shown up at his door, and
when Amy answered it, Maude was wearing nothing but a housecoat. With a
friendly smile, she handed in to a stunned Amy a dozen eggs and what must have
been three pounds of pea-meal bacon which she said was on sale but she couldn’t
really use after all.
That one was a bit hard to explain to Amy, without
knowing a little more about Maude.
According to Duke, half the people in the building
were suffering from some sort of un-diagnosed, untreated but nevertheless
serious mental illness. The other half were at least getting treatment, this
also according a grinning but half-serious Duke.
When you considered the income level, and how few
people in the building actually seemed to be working once you’d had time to
observe, there probably was a grain
of truth in it.
It was like they were all suffering from something.
The rain poured down. In a minute his coat was heavy
and sodden, the jeans soaking it up from the air and the shoes absorbing water
from the pavement. It was impossible to avoid the inevitable puddles in a city
where sheer entropy ensured that the infrastructure was always breaking down
and the city couldn’t always keep up with it. His toes were already damp.
He still wasn’t taking those nickels for granted.
Anything but.
Shit had a way of happening and Thursday night seemed
a long ways away.
The phone booth was steamy but mostly out of the rain.
The glass didn’t even reach the ground and the wind was strong and gusting.
The switchboard put his call straight through to the
newsroom, and a bored, effeminate but definitely male voice answered.
“I’d like to speak to Teddy Irvine, please.”
“And may I tell him who’s calling.”
“Ah…it’s Mark Jones.”
“Oh, yes, please hold on, Mister Jones.” The line
hummed and then clicked.
Another voice came on.
“Theodore Irvine, features, human interest,
tear-jerkers a specialty. Hi, Mark?”
“Yeah, hi, sir, how you doing—”
“I’m doing fine, Mark. How are you?”
“Uh. I’m doing okay. So, uh, Burt Keeler called you—”
This was nuts.
Just plain nuts. Mark wasn’t a cop, he wasn’t a
detective. He wasn’t Miss Fucking Marple or Mike Shayne, for crying out loud.
He was tempted to hang up on the spot.
Irvine knew all about him, and it was all scary shit
Mark didn’t want to deal with.
“Okay, Mark. I’m afraid I don’t have much for you.”
“Okay.” Shit.
The line buzzed and he could hear typing over the
adjacent traffic noises.
“Let’s see here. Just hang on a sec.”
Mark could imagine him riffling through a steno pad,
or more likely frantically searching through a pile of message forms,
hastily-scribbled notes and bits of paper all over a desk heaped with rotten
old back issues, heaping ashtrays and half-full tea cups with mold growing in
them.
“Okay. Here we go. Gwen Kassmeyer. She was at a
friend’s house, hiding out from her father who she said beat her whenever he
thought she was going out with boys. Typical Biblical tyrant-complex. She
returned home when some friends told her the police were looking for her,
where, no doubt, she would have gotten another good beating. She graduated from
high school, left home immediately, got married and moved to Missouri where she
and her husband have, ah, two girls and a boy.” All of this in a little over
four years.
Four years when he’d been inside. Another punch in the
guts. She was living a life. That was for sure. Hopefully it was all worth it
to her.
“Okay.”
“Jackie Alviar. The case is still open, and the police
have no suspects. Roy Olivetti, presumed gangland hit, no suspects. Case still
open. Sylvio Rossi, cousin to Roy Olivetti, presumed gangland hit…no suspects.”
Case still open.
“What? What?”
“Yeah. It’s what they say, sometimes, when they, ah,
don’t really have any other theories or any viable suspects. It’s more
political than anything. The police budget comes up about the same time every
year. It’s almost a kind of cop-gossip, but they have to tell us something off the record, sometimes just
for perspective. There’s always that give-and-take. I have sources, some of
them pretty good, some of them pretty…uh, I don’t know. I don’t always know.”
“Okay.”
“Anyways, I hope this has been helpful to you. Look,
if there’s ever anything I can do—”
It was the brush-off, or so Mark interpreted it.
“No. Thank you. You’ve been very kind.”
The man hesitated, and Mark could hear voices in the
background suddenly getting louder with proximity.
“Mark, I want you to know that you can call me
anytime. I really mean that. I’m a journalist, first and foremost. Burt says
you’re a jazz horn player. I’ve heard, never mind how, that you’re pretty good
and maybe even potentially great.”
What? Where the fuck was he getting this stuff…all
them sources, eh.
“Sir?”
“Let me know if you get anything. Anyways, we’re
getting close to lunch-time. I have a powerful thirst as I often do, and I’m
going to wish you the best of luck…okay?”
“Uh…thanks, Teddy. Mister Irvine.”
“Excellent. Keep the faith, Mark. The world needs good
people. Have a nice day and I gotta go, my editor’s piles are acting up and he
can be a real bitch at times.”
That was it.
“Sure.” That sounded bloody cold.
“Mark. Passive aggression is the best kind of
aggression. I want you to think about that, just for a bit. Okay? Don’t let the
world push you around. I want you to promise me that.”
“Uh—okay.”
There was a click and the line went dead.
Who
in the hell was this guy?
He stood there in a phone booth in the rain.
Who the fuck was that guy.
Slowly, Mark’s hand, seemingly disembodied by the
surreal nature of the things he had just heard, hung up the receiver and he
rattled and banged the bi-fold glass and aluminum door open.
Some oxygen would be nice. What the fuck was that all about?
There were one or two things he needed at the store.
Amy would be wondering.
So that was it, then.
He wasn’t guilty of abducting and killing anybody up
in Schenectady.
Which was something of a relief.
When a man is going mad, or has gone mad, or is being
told he is going mad, or that he will go mad, or has gone mad, he will doubt—or
believe, the strangest things.
Also, there were the dreams, which were vivid in the
extreme and one of the reasons why he had believed himself capable.
Amy was waiting at home—
Home.
What a word that was, so pregnant with meaning. A
man’s home was his castle. It was a symbol of hope, desire, peace and plenty.
It was also an illusion.
We are all alone, inside.
Anything
else was just bullshit.
(End of Part Twenty.)
Thanks
for reading. Only an episode or three to go now,
ladies and gentlemen.
Louis Shalako has ebooks and paperbacks available from Barnes & Noble.
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