Paper Lantern

by Stuart Dybek

  What do I want?

  The Bible tells us, He who forgives an offense seeks love. That includes forgiving yourself. In Luke, Jesus says of Mary Magdalene: Her many sins are forgiven for she loved much.

  Love? What do you mean by love, Father Julio? You ever loved anyone besides Jesus? You ever been married? You ever lost a child?

  You’re grieving, he says. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize … wait, please, don’t go …

  But I’m gone. Confession’s not how I remembered. The priest never wore aftershave that made me want to taste it. I can hear bullshit about love across the bar most any night at the Deuces.

  Someone opened the church doors like they’re getting ready for a funeral, and the wind off Ashland’s blowing out the candle racks. All the people who dropped a coin, lit a vigil light, and made a wish—it’s up in smoke. The old lady kneeling before the Virgin beats her fist against her chest, repeating, Lo siento, lo siento, like she speaks in echoes. I walk back to the Deuces trying to think of the name of that aftershave.

  Why you wearing a Kleenex? Frank asks when I come in. He’s behind the bar with a clipboard, doing inventory. How’s the horseradish holding out? We need more kraut?

  I’m through cooking, I tell him.

  You know, I was thinking, he says like he didn’t hear me, you were right, Rosie. This place could use a face-lift. Something to perk up business.

  I said, I’m through cooking, Frank.

  No problemo, Rosie, given the menu’s down to hot dogs and kraut. I can handle dogs and kraut. You rest. You tried to come back too fast. I’ll get the place fixed up nice, you’ll see.

  Rest? While the sumnabitch is playing the martyr working the bar and kitchen both, I’m upstairs like Sherlock Holmes. The gun he stole was brand-new—you can smell once they been fired, right? I buy a heavy-duty cop flashlight and search the closets top to bottom, frisk every hanging coat, dig through every dresser drawer, check under the beds, even in Harriet’s room. I leave his porch office for last. I can feel that owl watching through the drizzle from across the alley. I go through the file cabinets, desk drawers, the mess on Frank’s desk—catalogues, bills he ain’t paid, receipts he ain’t filed, overdue notices from bill collectors, threats from the bank he ain’t mentioned. Makes me wonder where he’s stashed our money and how he’s spending it. He’d be the kinda sumnabitch with a offshore bank account. There gotta be a record cause the sumnabitch saves every receipt—probably hid somewhere’s a receipt for the goddamn owl. I go through the grungy boxes of railroad junk. There’s nowhere I ain’t looked but a little metal toolbox he keeps locked. It’s too small for the props and porn and feels too light for a gun. When I give it a shake to hear if there’s rattling, it pops open, and notebooks fall out. Not bankbooks, little spiral notebooks he scribbles his great thoughts in. They’re full of drawings of trains, each page’s a boxcar with words on it like a long line of graffiti going by: DON’T … GO … MR. MOJO … B&O … BEAUTY … & … OBLIVION … HESHEMEHOPELESS … I especially remember that one. Maybe it’s like a code, otherwise why hide such senseless crap? Two days of searching with nothing to show for it but HESHEMEHOPELESS. You know, that could be the name for a horse—Heshemehopeless, a long shot.

  At least now I know his stash ain’t upstairs. He wouldn’t risk keeping it in the bar. There’s the basement, which I avoid as a rule, but the next night he’s out, I go down there with the flashlight—the basement light’s burned out—and a sponge mop. The mop’s not much of a weapon, but better than nothing cause I got ratophobia, and the one time I was down there I saw the dried-out carcass of a huge rat with his snout crushed in a trap.

  It’s more a cellar—musty, stacked with cases of empties and wooden beer barrels stamped with names of local breweries that went under before I was born—Atlas Prager, Yusay Pilsen, Edelweiss. Piles of cobwebbed junk Verman left behind: three-legged barstools, spittoons, a cracked GO-GO SOX pinball machine, bushels of coal from before the furnace was converted. Finding anything down there’s HESHEMEHOPELESS, you know, but I figure Frank would keep it all in a suitcase so that’s what I’m looking for, shining the light, poking with the mop, when the basement door opens.

  I’m fucking armed, Frank says from the top of the stairs in his raspy voice. Who’s fucking down there?

  Don’t f-ing shoot, I say.

  Jesus! Rosie, what you doing down there?

  We’re aiming our flashlights at each other. He’s wearing his Buffalo Frank Novak fringed jacket, too light for this time of year, and holding the Little League bat he keeps under the bar like a blackjack.

  I thought you had a gun, I say.

  Jesus, you scared me. I thought you were some thieving crackhead. If I had a gun I might have put a cap in your dope-fiend ass. What you doing down there? Mopping up? What you looking for?

  Whatta you think I’ll find?

  Frank flicks his flashlight off.

  Maybe where they buried Jimmy Hoffa, he says. Or Verman’s rodent droppings collection. Or hey, how about the last remaining bottle of Edelweiss bock in the universe! Want some help looking?

  My flashlight blinks out. I’m standing in the dark, pounding the batteries against my palm, but the piece of shit won’t stay on. Frank flicks his on again, shines it in my face, up and down my body, then along the stairs.

  Careful, he says, these steep old stairs are killers.

  I climb up slow. He’s at the bar, still holding the bat, staring at me funny. So, Rosie, he goes, I got a question.

  What’s that, Frank?

  You remember hearing the Edelweiss beer song when you were a kid?

  Before my time, I say, and suddenly I’m exhausted.

  Before mine, too, Frank says, but somehow I remember hearing it. Bet you remember the Oscar Meyer wiener jingle: Acquire the desire to buy Oscar Meyer … How much you think the guy inspired to rhyme Meyer and desire made off that? Frank asks, and pours hisself a shot.

  Don’t drink up all the profits, I tell him, and start upstairs to bed.

  He goes, Na zdrowie!

  It’s flannel nightgown weather. I get the feather tick from the closet. Funny how many winters I took that feather tick down and don’t remember. But I remember that night, how even with the mothball smell of the feather tick, I could still smell the musty basement in my hair. But I was too tired to run a bath. I lay there thinking I shoulda found something, if not the gun or stolen goods or the porn, something—bankbooks, insurance policies … He’s socked it all away somewhere—a safety deposit box, a storage locker …

  The clonk of trousers full of keys and coins hitting the floor wakes me. The mattress sags, and reeking of whiskey and kerosene, Frank that sumnabitch slides in on what was his side before he started sleeping on the porch.

  Ah! he goes, the homey scent of mothballs when a chill’s in the air. How about sharing some covers?

  I’m turned away from him and make like I’m asleep.

  I remembered the song, he says, then in his hoarse voice sings: Drink Edelweiss, it tastes so nice, it tastes so nice, drink Edelweiss. Catchy, huh?

  I don’t say anything.

  Hey, he goes, it can’t all be “Wild Horses.” You notice how in one song, Edelweiss gets rhymed with nice, and in the other, Oscar Meyer rhymes with desire. Think it’s just coincidence that the beer that’s nice goes bankrupt, but the wiener that people desire makes a fortune?

  I lie still, and outta nowhere the name of the scent the priest wears comes to me—sandalwood.

  No comment? Frank asks. Sorry to bore you. All right, then what would you guess is the number of times people the wide world over did it to that song?—“Wild Horses,” not “Drink Edelweiss.” When’s the last time we listened to it?

  The whole time he’s talking, he’s pressing closer against my back, running his hands over my hips, down my legs, over my boobs.

  Of all the songs ever written, which one do you think people fucked to the most? he whispers. And don’t try telling me it’s M-I-C
-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E.

  I can feel him hard through my flannel nightgown.

  Take those titties out. Still like it rough? he asks, and I remember he’d clamp plastic clothespins on them. He tugs up my nightgown, rakes his fingernails across my ass, then slaps it so I cry out.

  That wake you up?

  The handprint’s burning. There’s more coming, but he’s holding back, which makes my body tremble waiting for what’s next, and I already know once it starts I won’t care about the gun or HESHEMEHOPELESS or the four deuces I’m holding.

  Did you forget you have to tell me what you want? he asks.

  And suddenly it comes to me where our props are, and maybe everything else, too. He took them over to her house.

  I seen the owl, Frank, I say.

  Huh?

  I seen the owl.

  Was he with the pussycat? Frank asks, but he stops touching me. Last I heard, he says, they’d gone to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat. They took some honey and plenty of money.

  Get up and check, Frank. That owl’s looking in at us from across the alley right now. I know who put it there.

  What are you talking about, Rosie? Go back to sleep.

  I know you’re asking her her secrets.

  He rolls away and sits up on the edge of the bed, and pulls on his trousers. I slide my nightgown back over myself.

  You’re sick, Rosie. You need to see a doctor. Your head’s not right.

  How about I know you killed Lester? You ain’t fooling no one, Frank.

  That shuts him up. The way he’s breathing reminds me of Father Julio.

  I know you did it, Frank.

  How would you know that, Rosie?

  You forgetting my powers, Frank?

  Your powers, if you ever had any, and that’s debatable, been long gone, Frank says.

  I wouldn’t bet on it. Whatta you think the police will make of my powers when I tell them to check their files for James Lester and to match the night he was shot with the records of who won big that night at Sportsman’s? Think maybe they’ll ask, Where would an old black man on disability get a thousand dollars to play a Pick 3? Whatta you think they’ll figure when they find out a few days later we bought the Four Deuces? Maybe the IRS would be interested in what you didn’t pay in income tax that year.

  I hope you haven’t told this crazy shit to anyone, Rosie, and not just cause your signature’s on our tax returns, but cause people have been committed to the loony bin for less.

  I confessed it to the priest.

  What priest? Wrobel?

  Wrobel’s a drunken lech. He should be confessing to me. I told it to the young priest at St. Pius, the one with the stigmata. I told him if anything ever happened to me, you did it, Frank, and he should tell the police.

  You really think I could ever hurt you, Rosie?

  Whatever would give me a loony bin notion like that, Frank?

  It’s hard for me to live like this, Rosie. It’s been hard for a long time. I want you to know, despite my failures, I tried to hang in there.

  It’s hard for me, too, Frank. It’s kind of like that’s what we have to share.

  A day later, he’s gone.

  He’d been drinking all that day. And that night, after he closed the bar, he went out and didn’t come home. Drunk, hungover, sick—in all the time we’d owned the Deuces, Frank never wasn’t there to open the bar.

  That morning, pounding wakes me, a delivery probably. Let them bang. When it’s quiet, I go downstairs and unlock the dead bolt, but the bar door won’t open. I go out the back, past our rustmobile Mustang still parked with the hood up in the backyard where Frank was supposedly putting on new belts. The open engine’s full of dead leaves. I walk around to Twenty-second, and there’s a boxcar padlock on our tavern door and a hand-printed sign taped in our window. THANKS FOR YOUR PATRONAGE CLOSED FOR RENOVATION.

  The back porch smells like winter, not kerosene. I can see my breath. The space heater’s off. First time ever his desktop’s clean, all the papers stuffed in the wastebasket. No note. Only thing on the desk’s a checkbook with a fresh block a checks. I look if there’s a balance. He’s wrote in $22,000—half what we won on Cool Bunny. Money I won. The sumnabitch musta figured he earned half for killing Lester.

  Sumnabitch! I’ve taken to talking to myself, and only when I hear the echoes through the empty rooms and wonder who’s screaming do I realize it’s me. Maybe I been screaming like that inside a long time. It’s like my own voice has become one of those desperate voices I’d hear at Sportsman’s. They probably thought they were whispering, too, under the noise of the PA and the crowd and the horses, but I heard.

  I check his closet. His old, worn boots and leather jacket’s gone and his duffel bag. He ain’t gonna get far on that.

  Okay, I say, as if wherever he is the sumnabitch can hear me. I see your f-ing game: I upped the stakes, and now you’re raising me back, calling my bluff, trying to outpsych who you can’t outplay. I’m holding all the cards and you can’t stand it. Well, I’ll be goddamned if you’re gonna scare me into thinking that without you all we worked for goes up in smoke. The Deuces is my place now, sumnabitch, whatever it takes to run it will be worth it just for the look on your face when you come slinking back and see you weren’t needed.

  Sign says we’re rehabbing. Okay, make a to-do list: (1) CALL WORKMEN … Like who? Illegals maybe. Frank always said they work hard for cheap.

  (2) REUPHOLSTER THE BARSTOOLS, NEW JUKEBOX, NEW MUSIC, NEW LIGHTS, TAKE DOWN THOSE DEPRESSING XMAS DECORATIONS THAT BEEN UP ALL YEAR ROUND SINCE HARRIET … or maybe not … the holidays aren’t that far away … come back to that later …

  (3) INVENTORY: LIQUOR, CIGARETS, HOT DOGS, MUSTARD, BUNS, CHIPS, KRAUT, BEER NUTS … come back to that later …

  (4) GET A LAWYER … not Urbowskus, Frank’s crooked drinking buddy—find your own lawyer, someone with your interests at heart who you can trust …

  (5) WHERE YOU GONNA FIND THAT PERSON?

  There’s so much to list. It don’t ever cross my mind to put down CALL MISSING PERSONS.

  Whenever the phone rings I think it’s Frank that sumnabitch, but it’s bill collectors, salesmen, attempted deliveries, so I stop answering. The mail’s all bills, so I let it pile on his desk like he did. It starts looking like he’s still around. People pound on the door, so mostly I stay upstairs, cause everyone’s waiting to ask questions about where the sumnabitch is. I start a list for that: (1) Gone to Mayo for his asthma. (2) In Canada, searching for his birth mother. (3) Don’t tell no one, but he’s in the Cayman Islands, keeping our accounts secret from the IRS while I hold down the fort …

  It starts to snow. Telling you about it now, with dust floating in the sunlight and the door open on a summer afternoon, it seems impossible that’s the same doorway buried in drifts. I lived in a haze of frosted windows, like being trapped inside a burned-out lightbulb, the whole world muffled. No more deliveries pounding, so little traffic I could hear the planes overhead like they were taking off down Twenty-second, and I’d wonder where that sumnabitch went—maybe he’s in a loud shirt playing the ponies at Hialeah, while I’m here wearing my fur coat like a bathrobe and I’m still chilled to the bone. It’s a fox fur the sumnabitch helped hisself to off a boxcar because the color matched my hair. He’d wanta go out walking, me in red heels, bareheaded, buck-naked under that coat.

  I’d start self-medicating earlier and earlier. I could sleep the day away like I was hibernating, but not the night. One night there’s wino laughter. I go to the porch windows. Lacy flakes floating from outer space. Roofs, wires, fences, pavement, everything outlined in snow and moonlight. Our Mustang’s a gaping hood and a white engine. The winos have made a snowman in the alley. He’s wearing a trash-can cover like a coolie hat. His eyes and grinning teeth are beer caps. He got a beer can snout, a wine bottle hard-on, and a pair a grapefruit-sized white balls. Snow balls. I guess that’s why they’re laughing. Beyond him, over Pani Bozak’s fence, the owl’s
standing guard over that beautiful laundry frozen on the pulley line. Who but a crazy witch hangs wash to dry in a blizzard? In the Dark Ages, they’d a come for her with torches and a stake.

  Gusts hiss off the roofs; the sheets are back, waving in the moonlight! The winos have vanished down the alley, leaving the laughter behind like it’s the snowman laughing. Whoever’s laughing is laughing like they know that the whole time Frank’s been gone, with deliveries pounding, the phone ringing, mail piling up, and me waiting for that sumnabitch to come back, just so I could tell him he ain’t wanted, that whole time, he’s been just across the alley shacked up with the szmata behind the boarded-up door. I been concocting bullshit about where he’s gone, while everyone in the neighborhood, down to the winos, knows I’m a goddamn fool. And now, to top it off, he’s letting me in on it, upping the ante, like he and the szmata are flying their flag of fucking right under my nose. Ever wonder what it must feel like to sleep on sheets like that?

  Jesus, how I wanted that gun then. How I wished for another chance, like I had that night he came home in his filthy socks, to cut his sumnabitching throat.

  I put on my galoshes and slog through the backyard out into the alley in my nightgown and fur coat, with a butcher knife like I’m auditioning for Psycho. When I hack the grin off the snowman’s face, his head goes poof!

  I stand in Pani Bozak’s yard staring at the halos on the candles through the szmata’s curtains like they’re hypnotic. Her back door’s boarded up, so I go around to Twenty-first Street. The plywood’s off her front door, but the windows are still boarded like the house is abandoned. There’s a boot-high spiked iron fence with a rusted open gate, and six steps up to the door, which is unlocked. It opens on a dark entryway. The inside door is locked. I put my ear to it, but can’t hear nothing. When I step back outside, I notice that below her nameless mailbox stuffed with junk advertisements there’s a latch you can put a padlock on same as at the Deuces.

  That night’s the first, since that sumnabitch left, I sleep. I wake like an animal curled in my own fur. It’s Saturday. Nobody in the neighborhood has shoveled, but there’s a twisty, trampled path just wide enough for one, that goes for blocks like it’s leading to St. Pius. After a big snow, you can see that people don’t walk a straight line.