The Last Bender, Chapter 16

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

          Every time I shut my eyes to sleep I saw exploding glass. Or felt the man’s blood rush down my fingers. I shook and chattered my teeth and soaked the sheets in sweat. At last I fell into a deep senseless sleep.

          So senseless I failed to notice the alarm, the garbage trucks, or the bickering rag picker who never did stop fighting the war in his head. Mr. Roxeronil’s emphysemic deliberations in the shower and Mrs. Roxeronil’s verbal abuse of their dog Jones raised not a hair on my ass. I slept through a highway wreck and a drug deal gone bad that people probably still talk about. Finally the telephone woke me up, all the way from the kitchen.

          At first I let it ring, but that was no good, I just kept chasing it in a dream. I knew Laraby. He’d let it ring till I either answered it or ripped it off the wall. Laraby sounded like a twin engine turboprop landing on a field of geese. “Bartell!” he said, “I want you in here yesterday!”–his sentence strewn with jet fuel and bloody feathers.

          I winced at the empty, food speckled walls of the fridge. There was one can of cola and half of a corn muffin. I opened the soda and felt the carbonated cold scrub away the dank pasty residue of sleep and then bit into the stale muffin spread with margarine. When his rant took to the skies I hung up and sat on the couch to watch the morning news shows.

          By now, everyone down to nonexempt departmental supervisors had been briefed. All associates were to take extra caution coming to and from the workplace. They were told to cooperate fully with police; but under no circumstances were they to discuss company projects with anyone. All product information, every idea in development, even actual job titles, were proprietary and protected. Clear it with the lawyers first. I got good at spitting it out. I knew what every piece of shit maneuver was supposed to look like. Internal Security Associates would conduct discovery dialogues with anyone who knew the victims personally, time to be made up later. More of the usual blah blah. That’s one thing I’ll say about the army. Things got terse in a fire fight.

          Public Relations held meetings with sympathetic reporters at the three major dailies, local t.v. and networks. This would quell some of the more absurd speculations of early press reports. We had not vaporized them with experimental rays. There had not been an outbreak of Human Intrauteral Transcryptaste Receptor Virus. Like the commercial says, ‘Get your old hArd-On back with rEcrO-vIr!’ 

          The night before, while Bunuel’s thug demo’d my brain, J.R. Ivers ran a long report on the evening news. What I watched now was the update to that report, on Hello Inania with Kelly Kelly.

          Ivers stood outside Monozone’s polished grey facade. He waylaid people as they headed out the forty foot lobby doors. They used one of the monumental pink columns as a background. In his hands, the microphone was a jousting stick. He felled them one by one, amassing a pile of tear tinted cheeks and puffy red eyes, panting with worry and sorrow. And they knew just what to do. Not one of them was an actor, yet they salivated on cue, just like anyone else on t.v. Come on, I thought, show the bored, angry faces of two blocks north, where the subway comes up.  

          “It’s my own, personal tragedy,” a man said, wiping his eyes. “We worked ten tough years together. Now he’s gone.”

          A woman in huge pink glasses with a synthetic wet-look poodle-do was angry: “It’s not even safe at our desks anymore.” She wanted more police.

          It went on. “I’m standing here at Monozone where traumatized associates question the ability of police to protect them on the job. Ten, that’s right, ten Monozone Lab Associates are missing since Sunday night and so far police have no leads. Security is high here today. There is a metal detector set up in the lobby and there are check points in every hall. Everyone has on their security badges. But the terror continues. I have Mr. Woolfer from Human Resources here. Mr. Woolfer, will you join us in a big warm Hello Inania!”

          “Helllllooo Inaniaaa!” the bearded Mr. Woolfer sang through his coniferous grin. “I’ve always wanted to do that, JR.”

          “Go for it then!”   JR made a fist and kicked the air with his foot. “Tell me, Mr. Woolfer. How are you able to nurture your associates through this difficult time?”

          “Well, the Monozone workplace is a people friendly workplace, and people are afraid. So we’re sending out squads of Monozone listeners to network office lUnchtImEs. I want to reassure everyone that the Monozone Family Feeling is intact, and it will see us through this transition time.”

          “Thank you so much Mr. Woolfer.” He stared intop the camera and said, “That’s our investigative report for tonight.”

          Kelly Kelly stared into the camera and said, “Wow, that was something. I would be so scared if I worked there. I mean, imagine what it’s like, to go to work and just like, disappear. J.R. Ivers does the most moving stuff. We’re going to follow that story very closely until it reaches its end. But right now I see that we have some pictures coming in of a warehouse fire. Look at all that smoke. Holy Moses mother of god. That is really some fire. It started late last night when there was an explosion in the Pechardine Warehouse, better known as Slaughterhouse Five. Man, hoowee, what a night of news. Scary scary stuff. Fires, murders, kidnappings, all in our city. I mean, forgive me if I take advantage of this time to editorialize, editorialize just for one second here? Do I have time? You guys are too much. Show the crew. O.K. Editorialize. I mean, I just wanted to say that, things aren’t right when this happens. I mean, it’s like worse than a heat wave, or a garbage strike because with a garbage strike you can just call out the the army but a crime wave not a heat a wave? Last summer I think it was a heat wave for what, ten weeks? O.K. Now we have a murder and arson at the same time as a major corporate kidnapping. I’m thinking crime wave here then. I’m thinking, Big News. So stay tuned for Sports and Weather. And remember, be calm tonight. Let’s all wake up alive.”

          I zeroed out Kelly Kelly, shaved, showered, and dressed in my best linen suit, which I picked off the top of the pile on the floor. I found a pair of loafers the intruders had somehow missed. They didn’t match the hunter green trousers and jacket but I figured they’d pick up the little brown turds on the tie and the burnt sienna stripes of the shirt.

 

          “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?” Laraby asked, his voice an octave higher than normal, a shock of hair pasted down by sweat across his forehead.

          “My job.”

          “You were working overtime at that. Blowing Pechardine like that was pussy. It gets pinned to someone’s ass, they won’t find mine.”   He chopped wood with his index finger and turned a deeper shade of red.

          “That’s cause yours is a scrawny little ass.”

          “Cause it ain’t so full of bugs it swells!” I didn’t answer. He said, “That’s only part of what I got to say.”   His voice dropped to its normal range and became soft, a sure sign of predatory feint. “What did you find out?”

          I said, “None of it happened, right?”   He nodded. “Stronghole’s cat saved the day. You don’t believe me? Listen. It wasn’t us who blew it. All we did was get our ends wet, poking around for the paper.  Then this duck shows up, just like that, and starts shooting. Well, we messed around some with guns. Then we try to run him down. But he jumps Stronghole on the stairs. He’s got him down, tickling his ear with the tip of the silencer. I creep up on them in the dark and watch.  That’s where Stronghole’s cat comes in.

          “Stronghole’s got this killer cat who hangs out in the back of his car. It’s bigger than a fucking dog. I’m looking around, holding my breath, trying to figure out how to spring Stronghole without getting him snapped, when I see this pair of yellow eyes shining in the dark. They’re looking right at me.

          “The duck’s yelling at Stronghole to give it up or we all die when the cat jumps down onto his head. The guy goes nuts. The cat’s digging its claws into his eyes and he starts shooting at the walls, screaming and shaking his head. That’s when I came up from behind, and unzipped his throat. But it was too late. We could hear his pals on the stairs. They came in on us and we just had time to blast our way through the trench coats. We weren’t even there when it blew.”

          “I see.”

          “Are you ready for more? Cause we found some names in there and I think we got a good lead on what happened to St. Claude.”

          “Names?”   he asked. He looked puzzled and then alarmed. “What names?”

          “Relax, its interesting. For one there’s David Watts, working in the lab. He’s boffing the boss’s wife. They met in high school. His father is that big shot, Hubble Watts. He’s in deep with St. Claude. Even the lab. They’ve got to be–“

          Laraby had heard enough. “Shut up about Hubble Watts. He doesn’t have St. Claude.”

          “How do you know that? You said yourself he liked the paisley set. Watts is all paisley and his kid is straight herring bone.”

          “You don’t understand. You don’t investigate Hubble Watts. He would squash us. You find where that egghead is holed up and don’t mess with anything else. Is that clear? No one doubts your abilities, Jack, your discipline. I know you’ll do the right thing here. Find the doc. Now, what about Bunuel?”   I looked out the window, over his head, then at the chair, then at him. “Go ahead,” he said, “sit down.”

          I sat and said, “Yeah, Lt. Det. Bunuel paid me a visit last night. He’s the one who broke my face up. The guy’s gonna be a problem. He smells scandal. He’s going for the bust.”

          “The bust!” It was all he could do to get the words out between his teeth and spit. “Who the fuck does he think he is? Lt. Det. Bunuel, that dwarf!  Show me the man without a price!  Go for the bust,” he wheedled. “He reaches out for the tit, and he’ll find a big wet pizzle instead. Find a man beneath him willing to get ahead. Let’s put some money where our mouth is. Dig up some dirt on Bunuel. We’ll make it so he won’t dare lift a leg in public. I’ll fix him. I want that son of a bitch’s balls in my hands! They can go in with the others!” he said, pointing to the cabinet behind his desk, where he claimed to keep his trophies, including the lights and jollies of his predecessor, whom they say he knifed in the corridor after meeting the directors.

          After the steam cleared I continued. “Bunuel will be here soon. He wants full diplomatic courtesy when he questions our people. I figure he can use the conference room in security.”

          He shook his head vigorously. “Nix that. The bozos’ll shit their pants and he’ll smell it. We’ve got nothing to hide!  Make it the one off the cafeteria.”

          “There’s no mirror in there.”

          “Bug it.”

          I left word downstairs that they should notify me as soon as Bunuel’s car entered Bartholin Plaza and went to my cubicle to check the morning mail and get rid of some of the bullshit piled on the desk. First I wanted some coffee and donuts, so I hit the big room, poured a cup of vanilla praline French roast, grabbed a carob honey brioche and sat down with the dicks, who were passing around a newspaper.

          “I don’t get it. It ain’t art,” Needles said. “And if it ain’t art, why should we pay for it?”

          Church said, through a mouth full of jellied rye toast, so it seemed like he was spitting missiles, “You gotta find the interest. Whose agenda does it serve? Who advances, who stays behind.”

          “I think,” Needles said, looking at the paper again, “that I’d rather have the pinky in my prick, than the bullwhip up my ass.”

          Cherry became suddenly passionate: “I don’t agree!  I don’t agree at all!”

          Church, his head nodding, balloon like, said: “I’m with him two hundred percent on that one, Needles. I mean, even though a pinky’s little, it’s big for a dick hole. With your butt, it’s just like a giant crap. So what.”   He shoved the rest of the toast in and guzzled some tea.

          “I bet more people would prefer a bullwhip up der bums dan a pinky in der pecker. I bet.”   Cherry, applying the full force of his reason, shoved the paper down to Stitch, who stopped turning her rings to turn the paper this way and that.

          “Someone’s always poking around me with their finger,” she said. “I don’t see what the big deal is.”

          Church spelled it out for her: “Not in your cunt, in your piss hole.”

          “Oh yeah.”   She squeezed her boredom through a concerned squint. “I gotta vote bullwhip over pinky then.”

          Sidestep regarded the company from his one dead eye over a magazine and grumbled, “You are all weird.”

          “Why you gotta say that?”   Church asked. “You always want to kill the life of the mind.”

          “Don’t let’s make a federal case now,” Needles said, rubbing his white curls and bronze pate. “Jack, which would you rather do?” Sidestep dropped the magazine and stared at me. Church sat up straight. Stitch turned her rings and opened and closed her tobacco pouch. Cherry dug at his teeth with his tongue and looked at me with his stupid green eyes.

          “Well,” I began, “it all depends. Are we talking pleasure here or looks?” When no one answered I continued.” Cause if we’re talking pleasure then the bullwhip wins hands down. Depending on how thick and rough the handle is of course. Cause if it’s a smooth handle with a good knob, then you can jam the prostate and ejaculate, whether your anus is eroticized or not. If, however, the handle is woven of raw hide, then the pinky, provided it is smooth and well manicured, would be preferable. Certainly as an image it is more arresting, counterintuitive, bizarre. Which makes it that much more erotic. Inserting things in the fundament is a commonplace that excites little attention these days, while urethral penetration is performed primarily by obscure fetishists who find medical procedures exciting. They constitute a hidden and despised minority, whereas the sodomite is a figure of fun, often found on television and radio.

          “As for the photograph, because the whip looks like a tail, it is merely conventional. As an erotic apparatus then, I vote pinky in prick. For sexual pleasure, provided the tactile criteria are met, I have to agree with the majority and vote bullwhip in butt.”

          “You see!” they all said at once.

          “Jack, you always gotta argue out of both sides of your mouth.”   Needles said.

          “Cause he’s smart, you shit-brained gumshoe,” Stitch said.

          ” I was raised an Albigensian,” I said. “And you know how you can never leave the church.”

          “I had a cousin once was Albigensian,” Church said. “But he died.”

          Sidestep slammed his leg with his fist and sort of lurched forward in his chair, “You see? What kind of a god damn religion is that then, huh?”

          “Hey!  Hey! A little respect,” Cherry said.

          “That’s all right,” I said. “Anyou guys seen Juice or Stronghole?”

          “Stronghole’s late,” Stitch said, to which Needles muttered uh-oh, “and Juice ain’t been around lately.”

          I asked her: “You got any free time to set up interviews for Missing Persons? Laraby wants to use the room off the cafeteria. He said to bug it.”

          She rolled a cigarette with her DaDDyLoNGLeG fingers and spit stray tobacco hairs through thin lisps. “Cherry, we got time for that?”

          Cherry scratched his patch of red weed and winced as the smoke from her cigarette engulfed his face. “What about we had to put on da rubber to hang wit techs? We gotta switch dat around.”

          “Good.” I drank down the boiled coffee, pocketed another brioche for the road and bought a box of Lemon Drop suckers. The cardboard package with the simply drawn lemon yellowed-in, K-Pareve on the side and wax paper lining made me feel at home in my feet, like my skin wasn’t about to leap off my bones and the air disintegrate around me. Everyone was far away, chiseled out of space and left to hang while I ripped the box top off and put two between my teeth, grinding the soursweet to sticky granules. They have done things. They know the worst of it. Greed, degradation, the kind of viciousness only a human face can wear. And they know the weakness too, the lies and loony optimism that make it all go.