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Out with the Old
J.M. Black stepped into the pastel purgatory that was Bella Fantasia and almost wretched. He had expected as much, this in the cab on his way over from just having blown a substantial load of his monthly check on some over-hyped mare named Joy Ride: Too fucking bright, too fucking loud, too fucking ritzy.
Random notions lapped his brain as he stood in the foyer under the glow of pink teardrop lights:
Neon was never meant to trim out walls and furniture...
$20,000 worth of cheekbones, hair and tits will not enhance one's rhythm on the dance floor, shit-faced or not...
The genius that decided lavender velvet would look hip on a pool table should've been drawn-and-quartered by yaks...etc., etc, etc.
His year-long resolution to inject a squirt of class into his life was now looking dead in the water ten seconds into attempt number one, but the jones screamed back an irrefutable argument: Booze is booze. And besides, having made it past the front door, the toughest part should've been behind him.
He sighted the beckoning glow of colorful bottles against the far wall, and after jostling past a pair of aromatic pretty-boys in silk shirts that clearly had more than just a night of hard drink and yahtzee on the mind, he eased into a stool at the elbow of the bar. Right away the bartender laid a violet cocktail napkin before him.
"What can I get you tonight, sir?"
J.M. studied the bar with something akin to nausea on his bearing and shook his head.
"I think... I think I'll start with some Turtle Wax and a detailing kit, buddy," he mused aloud. The goddamn thing contained more chrome than all East LA.
"Excuse me?"
"Huh? Nothing, never mind. Gimme a J&B--you know what, line me up three of 'em. And bring me a bowl of something to munch on."
The bartender's waxed eyebrows made an ostentatious curve.
"Like..?"
J.M. paused like he was waiting for the punch-line.
"Like? I don't know, like pretzels maybe? Or some peanuts?"
A somber puss from the skin-head barkeep, then: "We have some Hawaiian Macadamia nuts that should fit the bill."
"Yeah, okay, whatever. Bring 'em."
The bartender turned away and J.M. leveled the man a surreptitious bird for good measure. The suit to his left noticed the gesture but quickly resumed his cell-phone tete-a-tete in some manner of unintelligible stock-speak. Something about the value of Turkish butt-plugs taking a nose-dive into the crapper was his best guess at a translation.
A minute later Mr. Clean returned with his drinks and a bowl full of peanuts, and set them down before J.M.
"You're not a regular I take it."
J.M. frowned. "Fuck me--and you know, this is my best flannel too. My good jeans are in the hamper, they aren't servicing the friggin' washers at the Laundromat till Monday. Believe that? What can you do?"
"You could buy one," the bartender cracked straight.
"Sure, I'll spring for one. After I pay off the Bentley."
They shared a contrived laugh. J.M. felt like adding a little primary red to the carpet's mute lilac, courtesy of Mr. Clean's nose. Instead, he grinned wider. Some more courtesy twitter ensued, then as if on cue Mr. Clean pointed a finger at the couple on J.M.'s right.
"A tender veal cutlet, fresh asparagus, a side of baby potatoes in a butter garlic sauce, and a sweet Chablis."
General agreement from all involved in histrionic oohs and ahs.
"Sounds great," injected J.M., and sucked back his drink with a wince.
"It certainly is, mister. Try it sometime when you can take the hit," Mr. Clean corrosively suggested, then retreated to the other end of the bar where potential oilers awaited.
J.M. offered a shrug to the couple beside him, prompting the male half to lean over: "He's never wrong, you know. Quite the miracle. Best let it go with a smile."
The man was in his forties, terribly sun-burned and decked out in the obligatory khakis and polo shirt. The woman to his right was some looker for a power-broad: Late thirties, blonde, stacked to high heaven and quite the Blackwell wet-dream in her faux-metallic cocktail dress. Both were ditching sobriety in favor of the sissified clear ale that was on special.
"I guess I missed the joke," J.M. said. "I tend not to frequent places of such luminosity."
The man belted out a jarring HA! "Is that what you really think?"
J.M. gave the place a brisk once-over.
"I think that flash has a longer half-life than plutonium. Miami Vice has nothing on this joint."
Another HA! Then: "Good one, my friend. So then what brought you in?"
J.M. went at his second drink purely out of necessity.
"I don't know--something my AA sponsor told me. You know, like advice: 'Try to fit in with a loftier crowd once in a while,' he said. So I followed the blue lights and acid jazz, found myself here. Fucking jet-set's vastly overrated if you ask me. No offense."
Uproarious laughter from his plastered neighbor. Even his date or whatever she was got into the act, but limited herself to a snort.
"Hey, don't panic. You're among friends. The name's Dale Hume. This is my wife Francis."
J.M. considered, then relented. "J. Morris Black. Call me Morris."
"J. Morris Black... Swell. Real swell. So what does the 'J' stand for?"
"Nothing I care to divulge lest your intention is to ask for my hand, sweet-cheeks."
"Huh...oh-oh! Okay, okay, I get it. Touché! All right, Morris, all right. Fair enough."
They shook hands. Dale smiled stupidly for about ten seconds before remembering how to speak again.
"Anyway... Bruno, the bartender there, he's kind of a head-case. Thespian. You know how it is, the pressure and all--running to this audition, running to that audition. Rejection is his life, so all he can hit back with is some attitude and infantile pooh-pooh."
Feigned interest from J.M.: "So what was that all about just now?"
"Oh, it's just a little conversation, that's all. Nothing major. We were...we were in the middle of discussing true happiness. You know, that which will make you all the merrier in life, and so on."
"So for him it's a piece of meat and some fag wine?"
Mrs. Hume squeaked out a giggle, then proceeded to redden like a welt.
Dale: "Well... You know, it's different for everybody. Me? I'd say... I'd say that if I could birdie every hole at Pebble Beach--I don't know--I'd be on cloud nine. What can I say?"
"You could say that's very unremarkable," J.M. noted, and swallowed some scotch.
Mrs. Francis Hume felt it an opportune time to chime in.
"Really? So what would make you happy, Mr. Black?" Her expression of drunken challenge was a leg-and-a-half behind the words.
"Mrs. Hume, if I've learned anything in my fifty-year stir on this rock is that aside from quality company or the perfect hump, happiness is the toughest game to bag."
Again she took the liberty of a deliberating head-start. "Could be. Or maybe you just...you just have no ambition in life, Mr. Black."
J.M. took a swig and sighed. "Lady, I just don't have any illusions, false hopes, friggin' flights of fancy, whatever you wanna call 'em. There's a line of appetite I just don't cross. I'm a realist. That's my curse."
The return of Dale: "So what you're saying is...you're saying that nothing could give you happiness?"
"Pretty much, yeah."
"Well that, that...that's not good," Dale slurred. "Come on, think it through for a min-"
Intervention from the misses: "Forget it, Dale, it's futile. He's what they refer to in the books as blissfully indifferent. The short version: He's fucked. Now let's go somewhere else before we're mugged--"
"No, honey, we can't just... Now wait--Mr. Black? Morris? There must be something. Something. You--you can't live without aspiration. It's unhealthy."
A pause. J.M. briefly considered dropping down a twenty and getting the hell out of dodge, but jones hadn't said when yet. He finished the last of his second drink, then shifted around in his polished baby-seat to get comfortable.
"Mr. and Mrs. Harold Boyle, Taos, New Mexico, circa 1968. Lived three houses over. Jewish couple hailing from Manhattan looking to brow-beat arthritis into submission with a little desert sun. Nice, gracious people--a couple of saints they were. If benevolence sold shares they'd have made a killing cause they harbored it in spades. As it was they were pretty well off. The father--the husband's father--he owned a pile of dirt in Texas and milked it clean. You know, oil-wells and shit. Mr. Bolye was an only child, so you put two-and-two together."
"Quite the windfall for one man," Dale proclaimed.
"Amen. So anyway winter rolls around, I'm killing time at the local donut joint nursing some Thunderbird in a Coke bottle and avoiding fourth period English Lit. like the fucking plague, I come to hear from the neighborhood gossip watch that Mrs. Boyle has brain cancer, and it's terminal. Now these two people have been married fifty-six years. Half-a-goddamn-century and change. I mean these two have seen it all together: Two world wars, prohibition, a depression, you name it. And still they pulled it out. I'm talking holding hands, smiling together, the whole nine yards."
Mrs. Hume's interest grudgingly returned.
"Well Mrs. Lois Boyle held on for a lot longer than the quacks gave her credit for--long enough to have witnessed the first amoral acts of the summer of love before slipping away into a coma. She was a tough dish--of Russian extraction. You know, they're built like Clydesdales. Anyway, the doctors told Mr. Boyle that it was just a matter of hours or maybe days then, but he didn't waste it moping through some agonizing death-watch. You've gotta understand that these people have been joined at the hip since they were sixteen. That's like over sixty years together through the good and the bad. Now I ask you: How does one cope? How would we--you and I--deal with such a crushing scenario? I'll tell you how: We'd go fucking bananas dwelling over the enormity of it while your better-half struggles to breath through the six-hundred tubes they've got jammed down her throat.
"But Mr. Boyle, he was a man of strength--more importantly, a man of practicality. So what does he do? He forces himself to keep busy. He settles all his debts, gets his affairs in order, modifies his will, and just as the last document is signed and sealed, Mrs. Lois Boyle, formerly Ms. Lois Goodman of Trenton, New Jersey, croaks just after sundown on a Friday."
The Humes listened on intently, looking like a couple of kids absorbing their first Richard Pryor album in some friend's basement.
"Mr. Boyle took it admirably, not breaking down or making a huge goddamn hullabaloo about the whole thing. Gotta say I respected that aspect of it the most; he kept his chin up and mouth shut. That's because he had everything planned out, you see. His wife, she dies on a Friday night. He buries her Saturday morning. Saturday night--according to the local rag--Mr. Boyle goes upstairs to his master bathroom around nine, his pipe in one hand, a bottle of some pricey Greek crap I wouldn't gargle with in the other. He strips down to his birthday suit and draws a nice, warm bath. He gets into the tub and sucks on his pipe for a while, then downs that bottle of fermented dishwater like it was soda-pop. He smokes a bit more, then he takes the straight-razor from the soap-dish, and not being able to bear the thought of life alone, casually slices open both wrists. In no time, he joins his betrothed in the great beyond with a fat smile on his face." J.M. disposes of drink number three. "So... You wanted to know? That, my friend... that's what I want."
Dale leaned back to reflect in silence. Francis beamed in the afterglow a good moment before finally speaking.
"Wow, Mr. Black. I mean...wow. That's...that's it though. Finding that one person to spend your entire life with-that someone you couldn't live without? That's the key. Sure, I'd say that would make anybody happy. That's beautiful, Morris."
"It certainly is," echoed Dale.
J.M. belched into his hands, then sneered wickedly at the Humes.
"My ass that's beautiful. Sixty years of bitching, carping and torment? And from the same mouth no less? Fella, I ain't got that kind of endurance. First put-down I'd be out the fucking door, I don't care if gold bullion's pouring out of that gash. No goddamn way on that set of conditions. No way. I just want the pay-off, come as it may: Lying face-down in the dirt somewhere in Mexico in a pool of my own tequila-ranked vomit? Pinned under the sweaty bazooms of some red-headed coochie from Indiana? Even ripped to shreds by angry dogs--I'm going out with a smile on my face, pally. Happiness is leaving the world a grinning corpse. Lets everyone know you went out with a bang." Another less stifled burp that turned heads. "And on that note, I think I'll make my exodus from
J. Morris Black rolled a balled twenty on the counter, leaving the bewildered, gaping Humes to revel in his wake. He made a point to catch Mr. Clean's mug on his way out and blew him a kiss.
Outside he was greeted by a cool breeze and the soothing caress of moonlight, no better or worse in the mood department than when he had first gone in, only now he was smiling. Three blocks east was Patty's Pub, ultimate refuge to flotsam, candor and wooden furniture. It would be dark, quiet, and still two hours short of last call.
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