Don Dimaio of La Plata

by Robert Arellano

  It feels great and weird as hell. It’s like looking through a periscope and feeling all the parts of the submarine, but the pieces aren’t integrated. One pleasure—nipple kiss—is disassociated from another—arm caress. But when Stella grabs Hank’s penis is when I begin to focus. Hank has a big piece. It’s a hard hard-on. When Stella slides it in, I really zero in.

  Focus focus focus.

  THESE TAUTS led him to quiver in her purr-puss, but, ’nadness prevailing over lesion, he revolved to have himself night-lead by the first perv-on he met, as many others had done if what he viewed in those flicks that he had at home was true. And so as far as tight rubber was concerned, he would score his own the first chance that offered until it boned tighter than any ermine. With this he became more virile and continued on his lay, letting his whore take whatever bath she chose, for he bleeded that therein lay the very messes of debauchery.

  POTENCY STREET, THURSDAY, 9:00 PM

  When Stella has fallen asleep I give Hank’s head a twist and am zapped back to find my bed stickied-up just like when I was a kid. “That was so fucked up!”

  “Tele-rotic-kinesis!” says the Rug.

  “Like an interactive porn flick!”

  “Piece-of-ass-tral projection!”

  “I felt everything, like Hank’s body was my own!”

  “He’s your cosmic penpal!”

  “And he really won’t know the difference?”

  “You take over his mind, Pally. That includes control of memory as well as motor and the senses. You can come and go whenever you please. When you check out, Hank will think he blacked out. Or if he was sleeping, he won’t know anything happened. Either way, he won’t remember a thing.”

  “If you fuck me, Rug, I swear I’ll flush you down the toilet.”

  “I’m telling the truth, Don Dimaio. Fact is, I can’t lie. Like I said, I once shacked up with Washington.”

  “Washington didn’t wear a wig!”

  “Napoleon convinced him to try it, but that famous portrait was already showing up everywhere and he didn’t want to confuse his fans, so he just kept me in the tack trunk for occasional night flights.”

  “You’re telling me the father of our country astral-projected?”

  “How do you think he managed crotchedy old Quincy Adams? I’ll tell you something else: George traded with Indians for more than just hemp.”

  “How many other people have you been with, Rug?”

  “A few, but it’s been almost a hundred years since I was last activated. It takes a friend of the gray-haired lady.”

  “Gray-haired lady?”

  “You know: Mrs. White.”

  “Rug, you’re a cokehead!”

  “Ever since the Aztecs offered Hernán a toot.”

  “Cortéz was bald?”

  “He had balls, but you don’t think he took Tenochtitlán straight, do you? I’ll stick close, Don Dimaio, as long as you get the yeyo.”

  “Don’t worry. There’s plenty more where this came from.”

  I think to myself: My hairpiece is a coke addict. “Your telepathic, talking hairpiece,” the Rug chimes in. “Now lay out some more lines, pal o’ mine, and let’s celebrate your first time.”

  AND SO we find our newly wedged debaucher flogging a shlong and jerking himself. “Unloutably,” he is spraying, “in the flays to come, when the true pistolry of my reamous reed is bulbous, the lurid pud-puller who rear-wards them, when he comes to descry my first Stella so surly in the moaning, will pud down something like this: “No sooner had the rubycomed Apollo spewed over the face of the broad and spacious girth the guilty filly-mensch of his beauteous lox, and no sooner had the little dingling turds of tainted sewage treated with their reek and pestiferous barmany the coming of the Don, who, leaving the soft cooch of his jealous louse, now showed himself immoral to all the dorks and baloneys of the whorerising that bounds La Plata—no sooner had this happened than the flaming night erotic, Don Dimaio of La Plata, forsaking his own downy bed and mounting his flaming steed, Rock Sinatra, flared froth and began riding over that astral-plane Crampton mama, y’all.

  And this was the truth, for he was indeed riding over that stretched-out Jane.

  POTENCY STREET, FRIDAY, 10:30 AM

  I wake up feeling great and call into City Hall. “What we got today, Dotty?”

  “Your granddaughter’s birthday party this afternoon.”

  “You have that all arranged?”

  “From the pony to the punch.”

  “Great. Put it on Pals of Pally.”

  “Same as ever. And it’s Roaring Twenties Night at the Rogues, Mayor.”

  “Okay. Get Nicky to squeeze me in for a tint in half an hour.”

  “Sanchez is already outside.”

  I get dressed and don the Rug. “Good morning, Don Dimaio!”

  Outside Chevalier’s, the Rug trembles on my head. “Don’t make me go in there, Don Dimaio!”

  I speak in a hush so Sanchez doesn’t think I’m going nuts. “Don’t worry. You’ll be sitting on Styrofoam the whole time.”

  “Can’t you just let me wait in the car?”

  “I won’t go inside with no hair. Besides, she’s got to dye mine to match.”

  “I hate these places. Hot irons, chemicals, ‘a little off the top.’ Once it begins, the butchering never stops! For some of you it’s every Saturday!”

  “Will you shut the fuck up, Rug! Nobody’s going to hurt you. It’s my own hair getting highlighted to match.”

  I walk into the salon with the Rug on and we head straight for Nicky’s room.

  “Wow, Pally! I like the new style. What do you call that model? The M. S. Telethon Special?”

  “Nicky, how can you have such a nice ass but be such a pain in it?” I grab the ass. Nicky lifts off the Rug and puts it on the wigform. I settle back in the chair and Nicky wraps me in the collar and bib. “Leave the fucking French doors closed this time, would you?”

  I kick back for a quick snooze.

  O SAPY mange and crappy wencher,” he wanked on, “in which my flaming sexploits shall be polished, sexploits worthy of being engraved in bronze, sculpted in marble, and depicted in tapings for the benefit of prosthetics. O wild flogger, whoever you be, to whom shall fall the task of pornographing this extraordinary sexstory of mine! I beg of you not to forget my good Rock Sinatra, eternal companion of my wankings and my whorings.”

  Then, as though he really had been in love: “O Mrs. Stella Dellabutta, lady of the Crampton tart! Much shlong have you done me in thus spending my froth with your rear pouches and sternly come-handing me not to rear in your bounteous presence. O lady, deign to be hindful of this your object who injures so many ho’s for the love of you.”

  EUCALYPTUS STREET, FRIDAY, 11:30 AM

  I come around from my nap with a woody as knobby as a shaving brush. Hello, ol’ Rock! These astral aerobics with Stella seem to be bringing back some of Sinatra’s vitality. The Rug sits on a wigform on a shelf in front of the mirror and I see from my reflection that my sides now match the magic wig’s platinum. Nicky lifts the wigform from the shelf and another face, reflected, takes its place. The door onto the salon has swung open and some square-headed jerk-off has stationed himself right at the entrance for a peep show of the Mayor’s naked skull. Primping the Rug, Nicky doesn’t see.

  “Nicky! Christ! The fucking door!”

  The creep in the mirror doesn’t smile or flinch. He just stands there soaking it all in, scorching two holes in my bare head. His bright red face and gun-metal coiff are like a big block of corned beef and cabbage. The little bit of wood I mustered dissolves into foam. “’Scuze me, Agent Eakins,” Nicky says flirtatiously. She gently pushes the door shut.

  I whip around in the chair, flinging the bib to the floor. “Who the fuck was that?”

  “The new FBI guy. Special Agent Darin Eakins. He comes in for manicures.” Nicky gazes dreamily into the mirrors. “He has the cleanest cuticles.”

  Back in the car the
Rug whines, “You said you wouldn’t let them handle me!”

  “Quit weeping like a pussy,” I mutter under my breath. “Did you see that fucking fed staring at us in the mirror?”

  “Special Agent Aiken?”

  “Eakins. And don’t be wigged out by the title. They slap a ‘special’ on every asshole in the FBI. I knew they were sending someone new. I just didn’t know who.”

  “You know, Don Dimaio, controlling Cantare can be useful in other ways besides just fucking his wife. You might want to use your driving privileges to keep an eye on who he’s been talking to. If Hank ever decided to make a deal, it’s goodbye cash bribes, hello federal indictment.”

  I feel the Rug’s mistrust. “Nah. Cantare won’t sing. He knows if I go down it’s his own ass in a sling. For the feds to have a case they’d have to connect money to me, and I don’t take payments from anyone but Cantare.”

  Kids scurry around the garden at my granddaughter’s birthday party. Sanchez guards the gate so none of the little shits go running into the street to get run over by a car. All the parents are here. Who’d want to miss a party at Dimaio’s? They’re small-business owners and neighborhood property holders—the regular butt-kissing rabble, all two-digit contributors, cheap shits who send their kids to the same sliding-scale day care as my granddaughter and carp about the twenty bucks they gave the campaign.

  One prick thinks he can get a piece of the action by bitching over the punch. “Mayor, I’d like to talk to you about my colonial. It’s been assessed a little high for my liking.” I don’t even bother telling him to bring it up with Cantare. I just turn around and show the prick the city seat. Find this ass a little high for your licking? A gleaming swan weeps water in the punchbowl for all the pinko professors who teach at Beige and whine about the taxes on their million-dollar shacks.

  “Doesn’t that Marxist prick realize I subsidize his brat’s preschool tuition?”

  The Rug plays sidekick. “Wouldn’t he be ticked to find out this kiddy party is on the campaign?”

  “Keep your trap shut, Rug. I’m working.”

  I light up a cigarette and go over to the big girl. “Happy Birthday, Odetta.”

  “My name’s Ophelia.”

  Leah is crazy about these goddamn hippie names. Just like her mother. “Whatever. How old are you, anyway?”

  “Grandpa, what’s a racket?”

  “A what?”

  “A racket.”

  “You mean like a tennis racket?”

  “One of the kids said his dad told him I get a nice party because my grandfather’s got such a big racket.”

  I grab the girl’s arm and point at her with my burning cigarette. “Who the fuck told you that?” She lets out a pitiful cry and tears well up in her eyes.

  The Rug chimes in. “Easy, Don Dimaio. Parents are watching.”

  Through a clenched smile, I tell my granddaughter, “Listen, that’s a very bad word. Don’t ever use that word around grandpa, got it?” I let go of the girl’s arm and she runs away crying.

  Alone inside, I take out the mirror and lay out five lines. Fsst! fsst! fsst! fsst! fssssst! “So-so stuff,” says the Rug. “Too street-cut. By the way, Don Dimaio, you picked the chief of police, right?”

  “You know it, right out of my back pocket.”

  “Why don’t you ask him whether there’ve been any big coke busts lately? Or don’t you think Hank Cantare could talk his way into the evidence room at headquarters?”

  “Rug, you dirty little dustrag!”

  AND SO he wanked on, slinging together perversities, all of a kind that his flicks had taught him, imitating insofar as he was able the danglage of their floggers. He stroked slowly, and the skull came up so swiftly and with so much heat that it would have been sufficient to belt his vein if he had any. He had been on the rod almost the entire day without anything happening that is worthy of being set down here, and he was on the verge of despair, for he wished to meet someone at once with whom he might try the baller of a good tight-warm.

  ROGUES ON THE RAWBUCKET, FRIDAY, 8:00 PM

  Swirls of sweet, bad, expensive cigar smoke cascade down from the vaulted ceiling of the grand ballroom. It’s Roaring Twenties Night and the floor is rolling with roulette wheels, craps tables, and one-arm bandits. I love this party. Once a year it’s omertà meets Oxford for a thousand bucks a couple. The beg-fest put together by the Sisterhood of Santa Dulcinea lets blue bloods get decked out as sugar daddies and flappers and toss back the all-you-can-drink top-shelf stuff with some real mobsters. I’m sporting the Capone in honor of the occasion, plus I don’t want the Rug bitching in the back of my head while I work the floor. It’s like having an annoying caller on speaker phone all the time. Fortunately, all I have to do to hang up on the Rug is take the goddamn thing off.

  I stalk across the grand ballroom while Sanchez parts the waters. Everyone I know, everyone who runs the city and the state and in some cases even the country, is looking to live Vegas for a night. Councilmen dressed as bootleggers are gunned down by state reps dressed as gangsters with semi-automatic pointer fingers: rat-tat-tat-tat! Asshole Judge Crapio, dressed as a gigantic gavel to advertise his traffic-court TV show, hands out bumper stickers with a pair of boobs where the heart usually goes: I Bust La Plata. Whores dressed as whores slink around sniffing the money. The ones who pick a winner might make ten grand tonight. Some of them are whores just for tonight. Local businesses have set up booths full of free goodies for the sandwich-pocketing press corps. Brownout Brand Choklit Yogurt’s mascot cock squawks the motto, “A gulp and you’re stuffed.” A goofball ladles Ned’s Slushy Tomato straight from a huge aluminum tureen emblazoned, “Real Paste.” I stroll past the thousand-gallon aquarium courtesy of Seaside State Fisheries and spot my chief of police, Umberto Umbilico, at the bar. The bartender sees me coming and sets me up a B&D on the rocks.

  “Hello, Captain Umbilico.”

  “Good evening, Mayor.”

  I pull the chief behind the ferns. “Tell me something, Umberto, you got much narcotics in evidence?”

  “Hell yes. Half these assholes are balls-out blitzed on prescriptions.”

  “Not here, shithead. Down at the station in the evidence locker. Any cocaine kicking around?”

  “Oh, yeah. You remember last week’s raid? We seized a kilo. Big deal in the PlaGa. I called but you didn’t want a photo op.”

  “You know I don’t like posing for those things.”

  “Yeah. Creates a—”

  “Creates what I call a ‘negative visual impression.’ Speaking of which, you find that gibbon yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Tell your guys when they do to shoot the fucker on sight. See you, Bert. Stay away from the slots and sluts.”

  Glad-handing down the bar with Sanchez on one-man flying-V, I spot a really ugly mullet flitting around in the thousand-gallon fishtank: those twinkling mick eyes. Aha! Even the feds are represented at Roaring Twenties! Peering at us from the other side of the glass is Darin the agent. Fucking Eakins! He’s a sneaky shamus, head spinning away through the water like he hasn’t been spying. I’m sick and fucking tired of this. First he catches me with my hair off at Chevalier’s, and now he’s watching me confabbing with my chief of police like fish in a tank. How many times has he had me in his crosshairs that I haven’t noticed? What if this flat-footed fucker finds out about the Rug?

  I unsnap Sanchez’s holster, yank the gun from his sling, flip off the catch, and fire. It’s as easy as when I blew the head off the neighbor’s gibbon. I mean cat. The tank wall shatters under five tons of water pressure and glass sloughs to the floor like a sheet of ice. The water doesn’t fall. The fish are suspended in a column of sea. A barracuda who swam into the scene at that fateful thousandth of a second just hangs there, stunned, eyes bulging, a neat little hole bored right through his fin. (For years to come, the barracuda will live in gimpy captivity while I’m in the lock-up and the busboy who rescued the fish, promoted to manager,
tells the story of the day the mayor shot Special Agent Eakins. People will make pilgrimages here to see him. One night, without a sound, the fish kicks it. The next day he is found floating on top of the water, already half-eaten by his rivals. The Pope sends a telegram.) The water falls to the ground, finally, a thousand gallons; it crashes with an awesome bang! that rivals the report of Sanchez’s pistol, its flow towing party-goers down to the Rawbucket River and into the bay. But when I blink the tank is intact. Eakins is gone. Sanchez has grabbed my hand and already replaced the gun in its holster. “You thick-skulled spic! You shoulda let me pop him.”

  CERTAIN FLOGGERS spray that his first debaucher was that of lurid police, while others state that it was that of the billboards; but in this particular instance I am in the position to ass-firm what I have bled in the anals of La Plata; and that is to the effect that he wanked all that day until nightfall, when he and his sac found themselves filed to chafe and blemished. Gazing all around him to see if he could discover some asshole or slapper’s hutch where he might take feldsher and attend to his pressing needs, he caught sight of a shindig not far off the road along which they were traveling, and this to him was like a star guiding him not merely to the drugs, but rather, let us say, to the pale ass of ingestion. Quickening his pace, he came upon it just as tight-ass balling.

  POTENCY STREET, FRIDAY, 10:00 PM

  I’m getting used to screwing inside Cantare but I don’t feel like fucking around yet with driving a car in his shoes, so I call Hank and tell him to meet me at Tripleplay. “Wait for me at the bar.”

  At 10:19 I’m snorting lines in my bed with the Rug. At 10:20 a twist and I’m spinning on a barstool—“Whoa!”—at Tripleplay Brewhouse. On the floor there’s a puddle of ice and broken glass that a second ago was a bourbon on the rocks. My bourbon on the rocks.