“I’d be scared to death to do that,” the girl said. “Those barber razors are scary.”
“Well, careless people can misuse a stripping knife as well. You ever hurt an animal here and you’ll find your little fanny out in the street.”
He deliberately let his gaze drop to her little fanny, which was pointed up nicely through the gap in her white smock as she leaned across the grooming table.
“I’ll be real careful always, Mr. Skinner,” she said.
“Never use the knife when working under the eyes,” he said, looking back to the patient little terrier. “Roll the finger and thumb together the way the hair grows. See? How old are you, Pattie Mae?”
“I’m nineteen, Mr. Skinner,” the girl said, marveling at those darting, tobacco-stained fingers.
He plucked the eyes clean, even to the lashes. He was so expert and quick the dog almost dozed through it.
“Can you guess how old I am, Pattie Mae?” he asked, releasing the dog’s chin and stroking the little animal behind the ears.
Oh, shit! She hated it when these old guys started that crap. It was impossible for her to guess the age of anybody over thirty let alone an old turkey like Mr. Skinner. His dyed black hair was all thin and scraggly. And he was all wrinkly around his droopy eyes and mouth. And those crappy gold chains around his neck and those Dacron leisure suits didn’t fool nobody. Shit! Those nylon shirts open clear to his belly button, she could see the gray hairs all over his bony old chest! He could play all the Elton John tapes he wanted to, he was still just an old fart.
“I’d say you’re about forty, Mr. Skinner,” she lied.
“Not too good a guess, Pattie Mae,” he grinned, teeth yellowed from three packs of Camels a day. “I’m fifty-two years old.”
“Really!” the girl said. “I’d never …”
“You know, Pattie Mae, handlers are like jockeys. An owner can’t show a dog in real competition any more than a horse owner can ride his horse. I’m a jockey and I can ride, baby. I can ride.”
“Uh-huh,” the girl said, mesmerized by his fleet plucking gentle fingers.
“I’m glad you came to me to learn. I can teach you lots a things. You’re talented. It takes much more talent to show little dogs. You like the terriers, don’t you?”
“Yes, I love them, Mr. Skinner.”
Philo Skinner was still stripping. Fingers rolling, kneading, plucking, stripping. The dog sighed luxuriously. “Be glad you don’t handle poodles. All those fag handlers. No action for a young thing like you. It’s tough enough to find some action when you’re out on the road showing dogs. Lots a fag handlers.”
“Uh-huh,” the girl said, sucking on a broken fingernail.
“Oh, you’ll be a popular handler someday with the real men on the show tours. There’s one woman handler, named Wilma. A punch-board. What the hell, she’s a little dumpy, but when you been looking at dogs all day …”
“Uh-huh,” the girl said, the joke wasted. “You sure got the touch, Mr. Skinner!”
“Wanna strip the ears?” He took her arm gently, nudging her in front of him at the grooming table.
“Okay, Mr. Skinner,” she said, a bit edgy, wondering if tonight was the night. The other girls said he made his big move after you’d worked there about a month. She’d been working for Skinner Kennels three weeks.
Philo Skinner was standing behind the girl now, admiring how her bottom stretched the exotic orchid patches on the jeans. None of these young girls wore underpants anymore, he thought. Not a goddamn one of them! And they didn’t bathe any too often either. This one had dust and lint in her scruffy brown hair and her dirty fingernails were bitten to the quick. But damn, she had tits like mangoes!
“Strip exactly one inch from the top to exactly one inch from the bottom. Understand?”
“Yes, sir,” she said uneasily, feeling him press in behind her as he pretended to guide her hand to the tassel of the terrier’s ear.
“The ears can’t be clipped,” he said and she smelled his tobacco-sour breath on her face. “It doesn’t look natural. It has to be stripped to be natural.”
He moved in very close, leaning on her leg. Oh, gross! The old fart had a hard-on!
“That’s it, Pattie Mae,” he whispered, rubbing it against her. “Strip all the hair away. Strip, Pattie Mae. Strip!”
The door opened and Philo Skinner leaped back, turning his body away from a squinting smock-clad woman dragging a reluctant Airedale through the door.
“Pattie Mae, why the hell’re you still here?” she demanded, looking at Philo Skinner suspiciously. He adjusted his own white smock to hide the telltale bulge, and began fiddling with the cage dryer.
“Gotta be a goddamn electrician to keep things working around here,” Philo Skinner grumbled. “Mavis, who the hell used this thing last, anyway?”
“I dunno,” she said, still squinting from Philo to his new apprentice. “Pattie Mae, why you working so late?”
“Well, uh, Mr. Skinner said he needed …”
“Mavis, you know goddamn well we gotta get this Dandie ready. Christ, Pilkington’s our best client these days. I gotta be free to devote the next couple days to the Beverly Hills Show, don’t I? Christ, it’s pouring outside!”
Philo Skinner was eminently thankful for the Thursday night rain, his excuse to turn to the window and let the tumescence subside. “Goddamn cold rainy night,” he said gratefully.
“Well, since I don’t really think Mr. Skinner intends paying you time-and-a-half, I think you should go home now.”
“Yes, Mrs. Skinner. I’ll just put the Dandie to bed,” the girl said, slipping the smock down over her breasts, braless under a jersey which said: “I love puppies and cuddly things.”
Goddamn, Philo Skinner thought. Cuddly things. Goddamn. Then he looked at Mavis, fifty-one years old going on sixty. Skin like sizzling pancake batter. Two eye jobs already. Hair dyed the color of puppy shit, with enough spray to do a whole platoon of goddamn terriers. I love puppies and cuddly things. Oh, God! And then it swept him away: an overwhelming emptiness and yearning.
After the girl scurried out the door with the Dandie Dinmont, Mavis Skinner said, “Well, Philo, I hope this one stays a little longer than most. Think you can keep from running her off like all the others?”
Philo Skinner lit his sixty-third cigarette of that calendar day and sat on the grooming table and stared outside at the night rain. Emptiness, loss. Yearning for … for a chance. Just a goddamn chance, is all he asked.
“If I ever knew for sure what I suspect about you, Philo, it’d be sayonara, baby. I ain’t Betsy or that other bitch you were married to. I won’t put up with that shit.”
Philo Skinner heard not a word. He dragged deeply on the Camel, exhaled up through his nose, back down into his tortured lungs, and stared at the rain. Yearning.
“It’s been a rocky go, Philo. I mean it’s been tougher being married to you for two years than it was to Milton for twenty-five years, I can tell you. I’ll try to make it work, you know that. But I’m not gonna put up with any screwing around. You were thinking about nesting with that little bird, weren’t you?”
And as he would look back on this moment for the rest of his life, Philo Skinner would always wonder precisely what event inspired him. Was it that pathetic fifty-two-year-old erection which died aborning? Was it Mavis’ tongue, sharp as a grooming knife? Stripping away the little he had left the way you’d strip the loins of a schnauzer? Was it that he wanted to cry because Pattie Mae was only nineteen years old? He would always wonder.
“Philo, were you?”
But he was already through the door of the grooming room, heading for the kennel, heart thumping, hands and feet and armpits slimy. Philo switched on the light and stood in the center of the 175-foot concrete aisle which dissected the building. There were thirty floor-to-ceiling, chain-link dog pens on each side of the long aisle. Each four-by-eight-foot pen boasted running water, an easy-clean feeding trough, and a warm soft bed off the floor.
In addition, each dog pen had a slit-rubber doggie door allowing easy access to outside dog runs twice the size of the inside pens, covered with gravel for the pleasure of the animal and to prevent splayed feet. The outside runs were protected by chain link, ten feet high—completely enclosed on top—not to keep dogs in but to keep thieves out. There were high-wattage security lights and a burglar alarm as well, to safeguard Skinner Kennels from prowling dognappers.
The inside lights woke several of the more nervous animals who whined when Philo walked to the pen containing Rutherford’s bitch.
“Hello, honey,” he whispered to the miniature schnauzer. The dog opened her eyes, wagged her stubby tail a few times and fell back asleep on her foam mattress.
Rutherford’s bitch wasn’t nearly right. Too cowhocked. Way too throaty. But he knew one that was exactly right.
“Goddamn!” Philo whispered. Then he dropped his cigarette on the kennel floor, stepped on it and went back into the grooming room.
Philo arrived home that night, during the same hour that Madeline Dills Whitfield was being mercifully rendered unconscious by Chivas Regal and four Dalmanes, during the same hour that a drunken man in a yellow rubber raincoat was reeling through the door of his furnished apartment, dripping wet, eyes raw from vodka and incense and memories of other Russian Christmas Eves.
Philo made a telephone call to a man who owned a fashionable dress shop on Wilshire Boulevard. Who did other business more profitably.
“Hello, Arnold?” Philo whispered into the phone.
“Who’s this?” an irritated voice answered.
“Philo Skinner.”
“Why the hell you calling me at home? I told you to forget my home number. What I gotta do, get the fucking number changed?”
“Arnold, this is important.”
“I told you, Philo, it’s outta my hands. You owe almost eight dimes. You never shoulda got in so deep, but you did. So you gotta pay and you got two weeks more to do it. Now good night.”
“Arnold, wait!” Philo begged. “I wanna pay you sooner. I wanna pay you Monday morning.”
“Well that’s different,” the voice said, considerably more congenial.
“I can pay you all of it, Arnold. On Monday. But you just gotta get me down on Minnesota in the Super Bowl.”
“Good night, Philo.”
“Wait! Wait, goddamnit!” Philo pleaded. “I been a good customer, Arnold. I been good. I been a friend!”
“Philo, you can’t pay the eight K. Some guys are gonna be awful upset, and now you wanna get down some more?”
“Arnold, remember I told you Mavis has this property? It’s an apartment building in Covina. Remember I told you? Well we sold it. We’re netting eighty-five thousand! Christ, the escrow closes in ten days! Even if Minnesota loses Sunday and my markers go higher, I can pay all of it in ten days!”
There was silence on the line and then the voice said: “Come see me tomorrow. With the escrow papers. Prove you got the property. You got it, you sold it, you prove it, Philo.”
“Arnold, please! Mavis can’t know about this. Goddamnit, it’s technically her property from her first husband! I can’t take a chance on Mavis finding out about the markers. Trust me! Please, Arnold!”
There was silence again and the voice said, “How much you wanna get down?”
“What’s the best you can get me this late?”
“Six points.”
“Okay, get me down for seven thousand.”
“You’re fucking crazy, Philo. Good night.”
“Wait! Wait! Lay it off, you don’t wanna cover it!”
“Philo, Minnesota is gonna lose. I tell you as a friend, Oakland’s gonna win by ten at least.”
“So what! I’m gonna have eighty-five thousand in ten days!”
Silence, and then: “Okay, and if you’re wrong, your bill is gonna be fifteen thousand with our little store, counting the vigorish. That’s outta my hands, Philo. You don’t pay and it’s outta my hands.”
That night, while a tortured woman in a Pasadena mansion slept thanks to Scotch and drugs, and a tortured man in a furnished Hollywood apartment slept thanks to Russian vodka, Philo Skinner, cold sober and electrified, slept not at all.
Minnesota would win. Win, goddamnit! And then it would all be academic. There’d be no need to do it. He could maybe even laugh about it. To himself. But if Minnesota lost. If they lost … And then, the epiphany: He knew Minnesota would lose. He wanted Minnesota to lose. And he was betting on them.
If Minnesota won he’d merely be covering his losses. His miserable life would be essentially unchanged. But if Minnesota lost … if they lost, he’d have to do it. And it would work. And he’d have eighty-five thousand dollars. Seventy thousand after paying his gambling losses. Seventy thousand tax-free dollars! But not from an escrow.
There was no escrow. There was no apartment house. He owned nothing but his business, and Skinner Kennels was hopelessly in the red. His house might net five thousand after the second mortgage was paid off. His four-year-old white El Dorado wasn’t worth what he still owed on it.
The way out had come to him tonight, there in the grooming room, while Mavis was poor-mouthing him. Stripping, stripping it all away. But like most neophytes, Philo Skinner needed impetus to commit a serious crime.
Fear. He smoked, and sweated the length of his six-foot-three-inch frame. He listened to Mavis snore, and rain patter, and welcomed the rush of fear. That’s what he needed. He even helped it along. He tried to imagine what they’d do to him if Minnesota lost. When Minnesota lost. If he phoned Arnold and told him it was a lie about owning an apartment house, that he couldn’t pay.
Someone would come to the kennel when he was alone, at night. It wouldn’t be Arnold of course. He tried to imagine the man. Two men, probably. Maybe one of them a big nigger. Philo Skinner had always feared black men. Maybe the other, some sleazy little kike friend of Arnold’s. He would try to run but they’d corner him in the kennel. The dogs would bark wildly at the implacable strangers. They’d find Philo’s grooming shears. The spook would want to castrate the honkie. The Jew would decide they should leave him in condition to sell and borrow and come up with the coin. The Jew would smile and say: “Let’s circumcise this schmuck.” Or maybe …
But it was enough. His side of the bed was soaked. He’d have to get up in a minute and change pajamas. His teeth and jaws ached from gnashing and clenching. This kind of sweat wasn’t work sweat. It smelled entirely different. Now he had the impetus to do what he wanted to do. Philo Skinner learned what so many lawbreakers learn, and often admit, but not to judge and jury. It was a goddamn thrill. He was high! Philo Skinner drank moderately and despised the effect of drugs. He smoked grass and hash only to impress any young women he met in bars. Now, listening to the rain in the night, he was flying.
Fifty-two years of obeying every goddamn law on the books whether it made sense or not. Just this once he’d do it. And it wouldn’t hurt anybody. Not very much, anyway. And not for very long. He’d never felt so alive.
Before he changed his sweaty pajamas, Philo Skinner lit his seventy-fourth cigarette of a very long day. He lay in the darkness, smiling. He was betting seven thousand dollars on the Minnesota Vikings. And they were going to lose. And then he would have to do it. And he would be rich. And free! He knew a former handler who had become a Mexican national and was doing all right as a partner in a Mexican hotel. Puerto Vallarta. Margaritas at sunset. White teeth. Brown bodies. All willing. Seventy thousand tax-free American dollars. Good-bye, Mavis. Good-bye to all the dogs.
He thought of the feisty Minnesota quarterback. Fran Tarkenton, I hope they break your fucking arm.
4
The Rabbit
Valnikov slept in the yellow rubber raincoat. He slept crossways on the daybed, one shoe on, one shoe off. He slept on his back, head tilted, face florid. His eyes were almost stuck shut from sour vomitus belches.
Valnikov snored and wheezed, and as usual, dreamed
of the rabbit. He cried out in his sleep and awoke when the hunter cut the rabbit’s throat, broke the rabbit’s jaws, and began peeling the skin back over the rabbit’s face. The tearing muscle hissed and jawbones crackled in the powerful hands.
“Lord God!” he sobbed and awoke himself.
It was hard to tell where he hurt most. His head felt like a huge festering sponge. His back felt hinged. If he tried to straighten, the crusted rusty hinges would scream.
He almost screamed when he stood. Now at least he knew what hurt most: the festering sponge. His head was mushy. Lord God, have mercy. He fell back on the bed, moaning. Then Misha said, “Gavno.”
“Please, Misha,” Valnikov pleaded. “Oh, my head!”
But Misha repeated, “Gavno, gavno, gavno.”
Misha only knew one Russian word and it meant shit. In fact, it was the only human word he could say.
Valnikov glared with one blazing eye and saw that Misha was standing on Grisha’s head. Misha twittered and chirped and sang for his master, who held his ears and cried: “Please, Misha, please. Noise hurts.”
But Misha just tossed his lovely emerald head, preened, and said: “Gavno.”
Shit.
Then Valnikov became aware that he was soaked by the perspiration from the oppressive rubber raincoat, and by the dream of the rabbit, which always brought night sweats.
Misha yelled: “Gavno!” like a challenge and through the agonizing mist of the vodka hangover Valnikov was amazed to see that Misha had just crapped on Grisha’s head. As though he truly understood what the word meant! Well maybe he did. Who could say what a bird or a man understood.
It wasn’t the shit, it was the noisy “gavno” which angered Grisha. The little rodent lunged at Misha, who squawked and flew to the trapeze at the top of the seven-foot cage. The furious little animal then sulked around the floor of the enormous cage until he found a comfortable place to settle down again. His head was covered with gavno.
The furnished bachelor apartment on Franklin Avenue was crisscrossed with clothesline which ran from the top of the giant animal cage to a nail pounded over the bathroom door frame. Three pairs of underwear and two pairs of socks were hung on that indoor clothesline, thanks to the endless queue of women at the apartment building’s coin-operated clothes dryer.
The Black Marble Page 3
