Chapter eight
Jack found Ray drinking a ginger ale at the bar.
“Sorry for the wait. I had to take care of some business with a delivery guy.”
“How is business, Jack?” asked Ray.
“The restaurant’s doing okay.”
Ray put a quarter in the jukebox and punched D8 for “I’ll Be Around” by the Mills Brothers. After the song started playing, he whispered in Jack’s ear.
“I mean your other business.”
“I’ve got plenty of customers, too many, in fact; I need cash to buy product. The liquor delivery guy just wiped me out.”
“Maybe I could front you an ounce or two.”
Jack’s face lit up then clouded over.
Don’t seem too eager, he told himself.
“That’s not necessary,” he said.
Ray thought, Stop dicking around, asshole; I haven’t got all day.
Jack shrugged.
“Hell, since you’re offering, why not?”
“Have you ever thought of cutting it a little?” asked Ray.
“Won’t the customers notice?” asked Jack.
“They can take what you’ve got or ‘Just Say No.’ ”
“Now I’m really stoked,” said Jack. “Hey, can I buy you lunch? We serve a mean burrito.”
“No, I haven’t got time.”
“I can get it for you to go.”
Ray walked out of the cafe carrying a paper bag.
“This thing even smells like it’s gonna make you fart.”
He tossed the burrito in a garbage can and drove to the nearest White Castle.
A few days later, Jack walked under an awning that read BREMER’S HEALTH FOODS — ESTABLISHED IN 1938. He entered the store and waited for the owner to finish up with a customer. Then he approached the leathery old man.
“My hair’s thinning,” said Jack.
The owner thought, Are you shitting me? Except for the fenders on the sides, you’re as bald as a bowling ball.
Jack whispered, “And I can’t shit.”
The old man nodded his head.
“I see.”
Rawson read some writing on the palm of his hand.
“Oh yeah, my eyes are bothering me, and my arteries are hardening up. Do you think some inositol might help?”
The owner pulled a bottle off one of the shelves behind him and set it on the counter.
He said, “I was born at night . . . but it wasn’t last night, asshole.”
Jack went into his office and locked the door. He opened the safe and took out the two ounces Ray fronted him. He pinched a gram for himself and cut the rest with inositol. He picked up the phone and called his regular clients plus some new friends of friends.
Jack left his office and headed to the dining room. He stepped up to the coffee machine and poured himself a cup of Columbian.
Tania pressed the button to start a pot of decaf.
“I’ve been practicing my reading,” she said.
Jack chuckled and took a sip of coffee.
“Would you like to hear some Robinson Crusoe tonight?”
“Not tonight. I’m having dinner with my ex-wife and kid. Then I have to take care of some business.”
Tania hiked up her skirt and adjusted the garter on her black stocking.
The poster for Bitter Rice flashed in Jack’s mind.
Silvana in the fields . . . her hands on her hips . . . red top . . . big tits . . . brown
shorts . . . rolled black stockings on her thighs.
“I’ll stop by around ten,” he said.
Jack joined his former wife and son at a table in the Good Karma Cafe around 6 p.m. They’d been waiting for him since five.
“Sorry I’m late; I had some orders to fill.”
He called over to one of the servers.
“Who does a guy need to be to get a drink around here?”
Jack pulled out a cigarette.
“Not at the table, Jack,” said Kit.
Not at the table, Jack, mimicked Rawson in his head.
Kit rummaged through her purse for a package of no-cal salad dressing. Billy downed his mother’s glass of water since he’d finished his own. The server approached the table.
“Ready for a cocktail?”
“Ready? I’m about to die of thirst. Give me a double shot of tequila on the rocks,” said Jack.
Kit glared at him and then placed her order.
“I’ll have a glass of Chablis.”
“I’ll just have some more water,” said Billy.
The server left the table. Kit unfolded her napkin and smoothed it over her lap.
“My psychiatrist thinks Billy should live with you for a while.”
Is he crazy? thought Jack.
He ran his hand over the top of his head, stood up, and wiped his upper lip.
“I’ve got to turn down the thermostat; it’s hotter than an Italian rice field in here.”
At 9:55 that night, Tania put on a black satin teddy her last husband gave her a few Christmases ago.
I feel guilty wearing this; he sold his Marlon Brando autograph to buy it for me.
She checked her clock.
. . . and then there was the time he used his glove to wipe dog shit off the sole of my shoe. He really loved me.
Ten o’clock became 10:15 and, finally, 10:30. Tania pressed her forehead against her front window to view the sidewalk below her apartment. At midnight, she changed into a flannel nightgown and got into bed. She made space beside her for Jimmy the cat. He settled in, and she wrapped her arm around him.
At the cafe, Jack was in his office laying out lines of coke for himself and a would-be customer.
“Here’s to Nancy Reagan,” said Jack.
“Is she your connection?” asked the customer just before he racked a line through a rolled-up dollar bill.
The phone rang.
“Burger Hut,” said Jack into the receiver.
He listened as the customer handed him the rolled-up bill.
“Dammit, I was busy,” said Jack. “Yeah, I know when the meet-and-greet is; I’ll drop off the flyers in the morning.”
He slammed down the receiver and put the bill to his nostril.
“Was that the First Lady?” asked the customer.
Jack snorted a rail.
“She wanted to know how you liked the blow,” answered Jack.
The next afternoon, Blanche stood at the cafe’s cash register with a telephone receiver in one hand and a yellow envelope in the other.
“Jack, you got a telegram. Do you want me to read it to you?”
She tore open the seal and unfolded the message.
“It says, ‘When you run out of excuses, call me.’ It’s signed ‘Tania.’ ”
At 5:00, Tania came through the front door of the cafe to start her shift. Blanche pulled a ten-dollar bill from the restaurant’s cash register and called out to Jack.
“I’m short on singles; can I buy some from the bar?”
Tania passed by Jack as he lifted his ass from his well-worn barstool in front of the TV. She looked at him, and he looked away. She punched in; he got the singles for Blanche. Tania put on her apron. Jack hustled past her into his office. He locked the door, opened the safe, pulled out a stack of bills, shoved them into a briefcase, and left the cafe.
Jack started up his car; Otis Taylor was playing on the radio. Jack drove by the restaurant and saw Tania taking an order.
“Will he come back now or will he hesitate?” sang Otis.
Jack changed the station.
A little while later, Jack pulled up to the Paradise Lounge and got out of the car with the briefcase in his hand. A few minutes after that, Ray was putting the cash from the case into his safe.
“Looks like nobody could just say no.”
Ray locked the safe.
“I hear your brother-in-law’s running for city council. Always good to have a friend in office . . . even better to have a relative. My brother-in-law’s a cop.”
Jack left the Paradise Lounge and pulled up to the drive-through window at Frank’s Footlong hotdog stand.
“My name’s Frank, and I’m picking up an order of smokies,” said Jack.
The owner came back with a bag and shoved it into Jack’s chest. He pointed to himself.
“I’m Frank, dumb fuck.”
He pointed at Jack.
“You’re Smokey and you’re picking up an order of footlongs. Now, get the hell out of here.”
Frank slammed down the window. Jack checked out the coke inside the bag and drove away.
The next day, Tania struggled with the rusted spring mechanisms on the sides of Mrs. Rosenblum’s torn window screen.
“I’ve got something that might help; Mr. Rosenblum used it whenever his prosthetic got stuck.”
She came back with an ancient can of WD-40.
“Oh dear, are you crying, Tania?” asked Mrs. Rosenblum. “Don’t be upset; we’ll get the screen out.”
Tania squirted the mechanisms with lubricant.
“It’s not that.”
“Then it must be man trouble.”
“It is man trouble. This guy I like was supposed to come over the other night, but he never showed so I sent him a telegram saying when you run out of excuses, call me. And now, he won’t talk to me.”
“That’s what it was like with me and Jake Rosenblum until that night at the Ashkenaz Delicatessen.”
Tania was all ears.
“He made a comment; I took it as an insult. We got into a ferocious argument. The deli owner came over to our table; he shook his head and said, ‘Why are you so mean to each other?’ It was like the ‘Mighty Oom’ was speaking to me. I knew I had to set my ego aside, open my heart, and love Jake for who he was inside.”
Tania squeezed the mechanisms; the screen popped out of the track.
Mrs. Rosenblum applauded.
She said, “That’s synchronicity; Carl Gustav used to go on and on about it all the time. There’s a phone in my bedroom. Call that young man of yours right now and tell him that you love him for who he is inside.”
Tania walked past the bathroom to a closed door at the end of the hallway. She entered the bedroom. Feathered headpieces hung by their chinstraps on hangers hooked over the top of a closet door; a small, tortoiseshell cat slept in an opened bureau drawer. On one of the walls hung photographs of Claire Waldorff in a beret, shirt, and tie; Blanche DeVries in full lotus position with the tops of her hands touching above her head; and Hansi Sturm posing in an ermine stole under a banner proclaiming him MISS ELDORADO. There was a poster announcing Ruby Lee’s performance at the Baberina-Cabaret in Berlin, a 1941 snapshot of Mrs. Rosenblum operating a turret lathe, and a picture of performers in a USO Camp Show. Interspersed among the showbiz memorabilia was a hand-made greeting card proclaiming “Mommy, I love you” signed “Fleur” as well as candid photos of the Rosenblums with their young daughter. Next to the phone on a nightstand was a photograph of Mrs. Rosenblum looking into the camera and Fleur in a hospital bed. Tania dialed Jack’s number.
“I’m calling to tell you that I love you for who you are inside,” she said.
Tania listened.
“Well . . . uh . . . you’re very welcome. Yes, I’ll be at work tomorrow.”
She smiled.
“It was nice talking to you, too.”
Tania hung up the phone and left the bedroom.
Mrs. Rosenblum popped in the new screen.
“I learned to do this when we played the Catskills.”
The older woman looked away.
“Fleur was ten. There were lots of mosquitoes that summer. She ran a fever.”
Mrs. Rosenblum turned to Tania.
“She loved me for who I was inside; I could see it in her eyes.”
