A California Closing

by Robert Wintner

  Is Mulroney supposed to laugh? How does she know about the used cars? He never told her. Okay, so Miss Moneypants knows what he does. He has signs all over town. Still, he hates it when they ask the old, tired question about used cars and this man and would you buy one from him, like they thought of it first, like it’s funny, like a little intermission here to laugh at a lame joke at his expense might be a good idea instead of an insult. Now look what you’ve done. The Little Colonel is standing down, taking it personal and getting depressed while somebody insensitive takes her leisurely time. And for what? An answer? Is that what they call hospitality in Highborough?

  Actually, a little break might relieve the chafing. “Many people do. Um … buy cars from me. But tell me something. Why do you drive a Pontiac Fireball?”

  She’s thinking, not a good sign, but the interlude might work out—she can stare at it and get excited over finishing what she started. Maybe she can go freshen her Poligrip to keep things in place. Man. Did Michael Mulroney ever think it would come to this? Did he ever in life apply for a menial job because he simply had to have the money and feel so degraded?

  “Don’t you just love it?” She sits up. “It was my son’s—my stepson, actually. But he can’t use it anymore with four kids and all that stuff he’s always carrying around, so I got him one of those, you know, really big ones he could actually use in combat.” She giggles at the imagery. “I think of it as an urban assault vehicle. Perfect for him. But I like the little red car, the Fireball, so I kept it. It’s all I need, and so much fun …” She drifts whimsically, perhaps on a vision of step-grandchildren in Hummers. And she sighs, knowing those little ingrates will never give her the time or respect she deserves—unless it’s a birthday or Christmas or another needy occasion, and she mumbles about how much she loves the self-centered little mutts just the same. Mulroney waits in thin air, such as it is, and soon she turns, suddenly struck. “Isn’t it strange, what we’re doing?”

  “Strange and full of grace.”

  “You know, I love the way you talk. I think I love the way you see things.”

  “You do? Betty, I need to…” Oh, she knows and pumps the jam in deference to his need. Mulroney smiles with no bliss, hoping for another discourse to spare the chafing that could kill the star of the show, just like the poor dead husband suffered.

  “My mother, God rest her soul, couldn’t come out and actually talk about, you know, this sort of thing.” Now she wants to talk about her mother and this sort of thing? “But she warned me that it’s unnatural, disgusting, a perversion. I think it’s a shame, really; but she and I were so different. And I blame her for—no. I shouldn’t say blame. I thank her when I realize the life I would have had if I’d listened.”

  “You think what is a shame?”

  “That some people can’t …” She stares away, nearly tearful, mercifully slowing.

  “Do you mean that your mother …”

  She turns back. “I’ve often wondered if my late husband would have been so good as to help me up and out of my predicament without my special skill. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

  Well, he thinks he knows what she’s talking about, and he may well be better off asking for it, but he won’t ask for anything, lest he blow the one chance to ask for the money. She doesn’t seem in the least shaky in the bridgework, and he wants to assure her that there’s no shame in dentures, and removing them for a minute or two might be a perfectly acceptable idea. But no—best reserve initiative for she who will take it or not, in order to keep this pond placid, which is not the same as flaccid but could be soon. “Well, I can …”

  “Shh …” She admonishes like a nurse, pressing his chest with one hand till he eases back onto the couch in surrender. How could such gentle ministrations indicate anything less than charity? Yes? So? Is anybody there?

  But his eyes open on something less than Topo Gigio, as she grasps his personal self by the neck and leans in to give it a good scolding. She stares, as if waiting for a verbal response? People process personal issues in personal ways, and while Betty Burnham’s gyrations seem strange, they should come as no surprise. Why not? Because. So Mulroney’s lids lower again on a downsizing that seems inevitable.

  Boy oh boy. A nutter, but he opens the eye internal on insight, causing yet another round of self-castigation, with silent yet caustic questions on the why and wherefore and how he could be such a dolt, stuck once again in the macho matrix. How could you be so blind? Are not friendship and trust herein secured, by which a grant may still be funded! Who cares if old Betty B is off her rocker? She said it herself: she’s a natural. Always was—it’s her natural skill that delivered her salvation from poverty. And here he is, her friend.

  Mulroney peeks—she’s playing patty cakes with a tube steak, mumbling a childish rhyme. He looks up when she asks, “What’s wrong with it?”

  “I don’t know, Betty. You may have to eat me?”

  “I may have to eat you? Oh, dear!” They share a crimson flush at the mere mention of the deed, till yes, she says yes, again yes, “but not now. Oh, not now. We must wait. We must wait for …”

  “Yes?”

  “Oh, so delicious.” She moans. She stares.

  Mulroney glances at peripheral movement, a stirring in the ether and the bushes. A passing sparkle could be eyes just out the window, beady under a wrinkled forehead, glimmering with intensity. Mulroney recognizes Phillip, the old guy from across the freeway who rides with Steffen. Phillip is self-inflated with bicycle glory from long ago, when he rode professionally in Italy. He never got over it and harks repeatedly about his glory days, when he’s not bemoaning his Catholic struggle and his frigid wife. Phillip is lonely and horny. Steffen admires Phillip.

  Mulroney wishes he was nineteen and glimpsing the future—seeing himself in his seventh decade and poised to pump the skull of a notable socialite while a man of pedantically parochial tastes peeps through the bay window.

  He could have avoided this, even as many in the neighborhood would call it the good life, after all.

  Betty Burnham sits up to ask what is making him so pleased with himself. Mulroney is at a loss. “Look, I would never impose on a neighbor’s hospitality. I agree. Let’s wait.”

  Fully apprised of the male character, she says, “Okay. Wait here,” as she’s up and down the hall, giggling like a girl.

  The eyes duck below the windowsill.

  A Louis XIV grandfather chops the heads off seconds as a draft chills the Majordomo. She returns wearing mink gloves and says she’s like that man with scissors for hands in that movie—or maybe it’s that other movie where the man has knives for fingers, and a woman dies but comes back as an angel to check out her husband’s sexual adventures or …

  Scissors? Knives? Goliath ducks for cover.

  The mink gloves have fingernails—except that they’re not fingernails but teeth in tiny heads, one head on each fingertip, each face showing stoic surprise. Mulroney doubts these gloves will help the situation, even as the left-hand litter surrounds the Little Colonel, who now feels dazed and confused. She seems encouraged, but he wants the silly gloves to go away, and he mutters, “You’re chafing me.”

  “Oh! I forgot!” She has lotion and douses down like a kid with a squeeze bottle of mustard on a hotdog.

  “You’ll ruin your gloves.”

  “I can clean them! I’ve been waiting for this. I’ve been waiting for you! I knew you would come through!”

  He will not beg the question: Come through what? Yet alas, sadly, she may wait longer because this cannot be. The star of the show cannot work under these conditions. She grasps harder in delusional defiance. He deflates.

  “Don’t worry!” She plants a wet, furry hand on his stomach, the other on his nuts, speaking of which, she appears to be bona fide, but assessment is set aside to get this one into the record books. And so, finally, at long last, hallelujah and hosanna, she sets to granting that most personal of favors with gourmet savoring a
nd, since love will conquer all, deliberation and purpose.

  Mulroney likes to watch, but this is over the top, just like the eyes rising again over the sill. A man must exhale sooner or later, and so he does.

  A playful spirit could count the afternoon a great amusement, yet he surges into the most difficult questions, challenging his fundamental objective. The scene is unique, to say the least, strange and awful at most. Betty Burnham of the Highborough billions appears to have set one identity aside in search of another, or to make room for the other that’s always been around, because she was always this way, which seems a certainty, because everyone is, or was. What that other self may be is conjectural every time—but this is no time for analysis. It’s a time to move onward.

  She gasps and hoarsely whispers, “My God, I haven’t done that in a long time.” She rubs stray effluvia into Mulroney’s chest hair. “I read that this stuff is the best healing agent for your skin.” Her smile is cherubic, heightened like a clown’s with lotion smeared around it.

  Yes, nuts.

  The forehead above the windowsill bunches tightly in witness of neighbor relations on this segment of the ridge. Mulroney stares at the ceiling.

  He anticipated remorse, but this is worse: covered in Nivea, spit and pecker snot, and she’s whacko and nothing feels right, and now he’ll ask for the money—no. Not now. Give it a breather. Definitely not now. Maybe tomorrow, or later in the week …

  “You’re so cute, all sleepy. I love that. Do you think I’m good?”

  “Good at what?”

  “You silly. You know. Making that little fellow go kablooey.”

  Kablooey? “I’d say … yes. Frankly, if you don’t mind, I’d say … I’d say you’re the best.”

  She loves affirmation of womanly skills. “If I don’t mind? My husband says I’m the best. Used to say. He died. Some people think it’s why he married me. They don’t know. Do you realize the amino acid content?”

  “You’re a health nut. But your husband was ninety-two.”

  “Yes, and he loved me till the end.”

  Mulroney wonders how often she’ll need a protein smoothie. “Well, we’re none of us as young as we used to be. That’s okay, if we go slow enough.”

  “I’m sorry you didn’t like my gloves,” she says.

  “It’s something I’m not used to.”

  “Look. I had to work each one, so small and just the right size. See? I slit their tiny bodies and scooped out the stuff and stitched them up with their fuzzy little faces at the fingertips.”

  “You’re amazing all right.”

  She stares sweetly as a fairy godmother. He lies back and closes his eyes, drifting from life’s strange need and payout, or potential payout that may be no payout, because a blowjob from the neighbor seems heavily weighted to the downside of dark potential, including embarrassment and hurtful disclosure to family members and no grant or loan … But that’s negative, and once again he has only to muster the positive view on friendship and trust in order to count his little minks gamboling light and fluffy o’er the …

  Waking up, he checks coordinates—after dark, but where and when, and what? Oh, Betty Burnham’s sofa after a mink-fisted wank and a … Oh, man. Mulroney groans, up from the love seat. She’s waiting patiently, understanding the needs of a man in late prime. She hints that a nice screw would be lovely, but she won’t press the issue. They’ll be friends and maybe have some fun again soon.

  How perfect. This is the kind of generosity and understanding that bind a woman to a neighborhood and could well pave the way to understanding. Mulroney affirms the negative: no, a screw will not occur this evening. But next time! Of this a man doth pledge. Maybe, no matter what. “Betty. I’m curious. Are you a Republican?”

  “Of course, silly. What else would I be? A druid? Gee, whiz. You are a kick, Michael.” She touches him. “It’s good to have a man around with some life left in him.”

  “Yes. It’s good to be here.” He moves for the door. Why press politics at this juncture? Though it is an election cycle, and donations may be a good topic. Moving like senior citizens down the hallway, she says, “That was lovely, Michael.”

  Lovely?

  “Well, it wasn’t tea and crumpets but it can be a great way to pass the time.” She murmurs, slipping her hand into his, like making woo. Oh, brother. Taking her hand will mean another go, and another, in a vicious circle of remorse and restraint, until he can muster the mustard to toe the line, as he’s shouted down to thousands of salesmen over the years, and ask for the money. He stops near another door and turns to her. But a tiny racket of whirring, chirping, clicking, and rustling preempts his speech.

  “Come.” She pulls him in. “Meet my pets.”

  The room is low lit in soft pastels. A bank of cages goes silent, as dozens of tiny eyes watch the intruders.

  “Rodents,” he says.

  “These are my minks. Don’t you love them?”

  “Not like you do, I’m sure.”

  “It’s my little hobby, for fun, for Christmas and special occasions. You have your bicycle. I have my babies.”

  “Your pets? Your babies? You skin them.”

  “Not exactly. It’s not like tanning hides. They make furs, not skins. It’s different, you know. Furs are lovely.”

  “Not so lovely for them.”

  “Oh, they don’t mind! It lets them last forever in a way.”

  “You mean like you could be eternal as a lampshade?”

  “Oh, you,” she swats playfully. “I don’t do big things. Certainly no coats. Not even a stole in the last few years. I did a muffler last year. But I’ll stick to collars and trim now. I do gloves for very special people. Look at them. How could you not love them?”

  “Yeah, that would be a hell of a thing, not loving them.”

  Some of her babies have babies of their own, who romp and frolic, carefree with needs met and none of the anxiety of the elderly babies. “Aren’t they adorable?” She awaits affirmation, confident as a proud mother.

  Mulroney mumbles, “Yes. Adorable.”

  She plucks a juvenile from a cage and cuddles it to her cheek. “And sooo soft. It’s softness to die for?” She hands the baby mink to Mulroney, in whose hand it curls and stares up.

  “Yes, well, they die for it, don’t they?”

  “Oh, you.” This playful swat is more forceful, since a nerve has been touched, suggesting that her babies are actually dead rather than immortalized in—gloves. Can you imagine?

  With an imagination more supple than most, Mulroney strains. “Why gloves?”

  “It came to me. You could fit your finger in there, couldn’t you? So soft and warm. The forefinger and little-finger babies are nearly ready. The pinky and pointer come before the others, and the thumb comes last. But they grow to the next size in a day or two.”

  “So we’re looking at three more weeks for a pecker cozy?”

  “Oh, you!” My, but she does love the earthy humor. “Guess who this pair is for?”

  Mulroney senses bile on the rise. Who in the neighborhood could imagine what’s happening here? He fears that his name is on the next pair.

  She beams.

  He shrugs, “Not a clue.”

  “Hold your hand up.”

  “Betty. No, no. Really.”

  “But I want to.”

  “I don’t want you to.”

  “But I want to.”

  “Please. Betty. I don’t want you to.”

  “You wanted me to a little while ago.”

  “That was different. Nobody had to die.”

  “It wasn’t so different. A little bit of me dies when I have to do that. I mean, not that, that, but the other, what you wanted me to do, what you made me promise to do. You men are all alike. I want to do it for you. And I want to do something else for you. But oh, no.”

  “Honestly, the one thing was enough.”

  “But what if I want to do more?”

  Perfect! It’s a clos
ing question no less than asking for color options.

  “I can’t wear mink gloves. But I have an idea.”

  “Why not? They’re soft, warm, water repellant. You’ll love them!”

  “I can’t. I mean I already love them.”

  “So? Minks breed like crazy, and it doesn’t hurt them. Watch.” She plucks the little beast from his hand with a practiced grasp around the chest, her thumb on its head, and …

  “No!” bellows Mulroney, grabbing her wrist.

  “Michael! You’re hurting me!” She whimpers, dropping the little mink into Mulroney’s hand. He sets it back in the cage.

  “Sorry. Look: what you do is your own business, obviously. I just can’t …”

  “Psh … And here I thought you were different. You’re … You’re not … You’re a tree hugger!”

  “I’m not. I hate trees. I am unique in some ways, but I just can’t stand animal torture.”

  “It’s not torture. Michael, I don’t want us to have our first tiff over this. You asked me to eat you. Then you asked if I was a Republican. What’s a girl to think?” She waits, batting lashes, an opening for romantic truce.

  Our first tiff? Oh, brother. “You leave the legs and feet on. You put the heads on the ends. It’s … grotesque.”

  “The legs and feet are stitched very nicely, if I do say so, along the length of the finger, and the head is over the fingernail. It’s animate. It speaks to me. You prefer bleeding heart morality? You try sticking a big fat penis in your mouth sometime. Now that’s grotesque.”

  “You said you … had natural skill. It was mutual consent—wait! You’re right. Let’s not squabble. Dead animal faces on fingertips are … difficult for me. Okay? But we can do something together.”

  “Oh, God!” She laughs at his tactful caution and loves him after all. She can’t help it. They will survive this silly impasse. She takes his arm to resume their dreamy drift to a sweet fare thee well in the sumptuous bye and bye, till we meet again, mon ami.