Ours became the wildest underground colony the world over, attracting thousands of immigrants, Afghan to Zulu. A whole new hybrid race emerged—or, rather, dug in deeper. The birth rate increased exponentially. Gambians got it on with Goans, Cubans taught Pakistanis how to mambo, and the kids kept coming. Of course, all those couplings brought their by-products, so I concentrated on improving the pediatrics program at Broodnest General, the underground hospital where our drop-out doctors made sure the little suckers arrived safely. With Dig City birthrate booming, the consuming domestic issue became education. I revamped the primary school system, drawing liberally on Shep’s model. Every day, I appreciated a little more how the bogus blind man had prepared me, by his example, for my own stewardship of an orphan race.
Swift application of the promised policy won me fanatical support among editors of both the Dig City Dirt and the Hole-in-the-Ground Herald. Although the entire colony clearly appreciated the reforms and my popularity in subterranean polls soared, it was Jocy who always delivered the coup de grace that won the people’s hearts. During one particularly pitched town meeting in the packed Comb, everybody in the parent– teacher association was arguing over the athletic program’s mascot proposal. Most of the obvious underground icons were too easy and carried unflattering connotations: worms, moles, grubs, et cetera. I gamely suggested the Beetles, but Jocy bested me, all agreed, when she abbreviated the idea: the DC Bees. As symbol, the creature trafficked the very nectar of community, industriousness, and ingenuity, and the solution expedited the next item on the agenda (which, from other assemblies of the PTA, I knew could drag on for hours of filibuster): school colors. Yellow and black stripes made for fantastic warm-up pants.
During my tenure, Dig City saw days of great growth and prosperity. Thanks to my administration’s development of craft, light industry, underground agriculture and, of course, scavengery, the domestic product rose steadily. These were enchanted days. At first, nobody in the Beast batted an eyelash. Hermanito passed along intelligence that suggested Apple Jack and his staff were satisfied with the overworld byproducts of our colony: the homeless out of sight, a marked mitigation of urban blight. The denizens of Dig City were the white blood cells in the bypassed arteries of the city, our discrete circulation maintaining a glowing complexion on the surface. Over time, however, the aboveground powers began to take an unfavorable attitude toward our subterranean squat. We rankled by our example. Sixteenth Century and since, New England neighborhoods had been rendered socially homogeneous, with prejudice always a ready rallying cry to distract the working class and tolerance confined to tiny Rhode Island, the rest of the colonies’ retarded cousin. By admitting anybody, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation, our underground occupation brought ineluctable integration, pushing the overworld’s hand. After Dig City’s example, marginalized groups above grade began to enhance efforts to band together. Synagogues and Baptist churches sponsored seder-barbecues and the Cambridge Gay Men’s Choir won best float in the St. Patrick’s Day parade. This sort of thing irritated the upstairs management, but I was too focused on public policy to pay attention to diplomacy.
Jocy had four children. It all happened so suddenly, it was hard to believe they belonged to me. Being a father was kind of like being chief: a big fuss I felt like I had not merited but which had fallen into my lap. I could comprehend how playing a VR game had somehow won me the crown, but in all the excitement and overwork of running a shoestring mobocracy, I could not clearly recall copulation. There were so many all-nighters at the Hive, punctuated by my return, wrecked, to the Nest, that the jobs might have happened anywhere in there, even in my sleep. I was a little irked that I could not remember the presumably passionate nights that had yielded two sons and two daughters, but the term in my cell accessed some of the hottest bottom sites on the Net, and I copped frequent quickies and pulled occasional all-nighters with good ol’ Mrs. Palmer, man’s other best friend, who lives at the end of Arm Street. Lending new pertinence to my private appreciation of the nickname Fast Eddie, I sublimated all the energies of pseudo-celibacy into that most favored game of solitaire. Personal space was of course hard to come by in Dig City, but early on I settled on a special place as my private getaway. Adjacent to the Hive there was a classical lavatory, three stalls and a sink left over from the days when the Beast had staffed this section of the Central Artery/Tunnel. Terry and Cray understood I got my best thinking done on the throne. “Eddie’s off to write a letter to Apple Jack,” they joked. I preferred the center stool. Here, I conceived projects, hammered out plans, and worked through problems between brief flights of onanistic bliss. It cleared my mind, gave me a kick, and I got it over with quickly. Other executives have been just as effective while occasionally indulging in a little slapple and tic.
One Sunday, gray and rainy, I awoke in the Nest with a start and an erection. The same clues as ever told me about the weather up there: the rivulets seeping through the cracks and along the foot of the wall, provocative droplets condensing pregnantly on the metal portal above my bed. Best of all was an aspect I could not recall experiencing since I had accidentally descended into this deleterious scene, likely as not because a constellation of circumstances had not yet conspired to keep me here in bed on one of the sixty-or-so days of the year that commercial traffic was not thundering overhead: The inch or so of steel that separated my compact domicile from the well-trodden sidewalk was beset by the mystical patter of precipitation. When had Jocy and I last done it? I seemed to recall suckling a breast, but it felt like a far-off, remote notion. Could it have been before our honeymoon? When had I ever, I groggily contemplated, enjoyed congress with the lady who made an us out of me, in lucid morning vitality, on that day engineered for such enjoyment, under romantic summer rain’s trill and timpani? If ever, I could not remember.
My hand was idly following such thoughts when someone burst into the Nest. I was scrambling to cover up when I saw it was Terry. “Cray has called an emergency cabinet meeting, Eddie.”
“What is it?”
“Hermanito up above has been sending us some alarming messages. Apple Jack’s getting ornery.”
I hurried to the Hive, worried that the emergency might have something to do with me. Jocy was waiting. Cray looked grave. “The mayor’s got an old score to settle,” he said.
“What’s the grudge?” I held my breath, ruminating: I knew it! Apple Jack finally figured out it’s Eddie Corrente at the helm here. Still holding a grudge from when I was caught trespassing at Adelle’s, he’s now issuing a deadly summons.
“It’s about the death of Levis, his old friend. AJ’s convinced that whoever killed him is hiding out down here.”
Briefly relieved, I breathed. “I don’t get it. From what I’m told, nobody liked Levis anyway.”
Jocy said, “Everybody hates Apple Jack, too. Maybe that’s why he and Levis got along.”
“Any idea what Apple Jack might do?”
“I bet it won’t take us long to find out,” Terry said. “Our only choice is to re-open the Levis investigation.”
Terry and Cray went off to contact Hermanito, leaving Jocy and me alone in the Hive. “This is ridiculous,” Jocy said. “Everyone knows Levis was killed by thieves at the Crossroads …. What’s wrong, Eddie? You look ruddy.”
“Strange, hearing you just now … my mind wandered, my thoughts racing back and forth.”
“What do you mean? Why so anxious?”
“I thought I heard you say that Levis was cut down at the Crossroads.”
“That was the story. It hasn’t died out yet.”
“Where did this thing happen? Be precise.”
“The Crossroads tavern under the casino in East Beast— at least, that’s the last place Levis was seen alive before he got hammered in the Ted Williams tunnel.”
“When? How long ago?”
“The Herald no sooner reported Levis dead then you appeared and they hailed you King of the Bees.” I buck
led over at a sudden cramp. “Eddie, are you okay?”
“I think I’m coming down with something.”
I went next door to the lavatory to work this one through. The weird coincidence about Levis’s death was a minor mindblower, but I reminded myself that the TW was a highwayman’s favorite spot for the quick crash and dash. There was a new accident in there every week. Still, the little detail about the timing was messing with more than just my head.
It wasn’t so funny anymore, that joke about writing AJ a letter. Constipated, I couldn’t move. It must have been the pressure getting to me. I needed refreshed perspective, and so chose to invoke a long-lost obsession. I recalled my fondness for an old premise: Pretend Pauly Corrente’s dead.
I pictured Merry at the wake, buxom in black mini-dress, pillbox hat cocked just so, eyes peeking coyly from under beaded mesh, seeming less like grieving Penelope than wily Scheherazade. In my mind, her bosom heaving, daubing opulent tears with a kerchief, Merry has not aged, only ripened. A hundred sudden suitors, from assistant traffic engineers to county selectmen, each scheming to be her comforter, mill around the ground floor of our house. Did I say “our”? Yes, I suppose I feel a little possessive. I walk in, a passion of protectiveness welling in my breast, and reclaim my home, vanquishing the stewards of the status quo. In a second, Merry is towing me through the house, weaving between charcoal suits. “We have to be alone.” In the study, she sidles onto Pauly’s commode and sits me on her lap. A proud son, I bask in Merry’s bountiful embrace and tell her all about how far I’ve come from the kid she worried would never get his nose out of the arcade: the rescue of Dig City (she is pleased to know I have become a politician just like Pauly), the lovely wife (the kind any boy’s mother would be proud to have brought home to her), the chance children—stripling girls, strapping boys.
All of a sudden our reunion was ruptured. Merry’s veil was rended with a dreadful sibilance and the Corrente study melted away. I sat alone on a throne in Dig City with an insufferable stench and something else, a sensation I could not place. There was that noise again, like a great tearing of cloth—somebody occupied the stall to the right of mine. Cray and Terry were doing detective work and there was no way my immaculate Jocy could be giving birth to such dischord. Had one of the guards gotten dyspepsia?
A man called over his own cacophonous racket, “‘Little help—any TP over there?” Had my noxious neighbor detected the tempo of my self-gratification? My ears burning with embarrassment, I reached for the roll. Filled with a terrible foreboding, I experienced a synesthetic short-circuit provoked by a stimulus foreign yet familiar, something which, as airborne, could have been visible, audible, olfactory, palpable, palatable: furtive whispers? green felt blotters? sour lemon? I could not name the nature of the offending atoms in the air, but presently, in the flicker of reflex it took me to toss the tube at a pair of shabby shoes that weren’t DC issue, it came to mind as a word, a neologism, albeit rather retro for neo, speaking itself at last as a bit of blather that, even over the stink, could have been referenced by any one of the senses: Pep-O-mint.
I bent over and peeped under the partition. It was Metzger, the orphan broker, screwed-up features, jaundice, and all. “Eddie King, huh?”
“What are you doing here?”
Metzger strained at his task, his face puckered in that acrid expression I remembered from our first meeting. “What does it look like I’m doing?” he said, punctuating derision with a dissonant sizzle.
“I mean how did you find me?”
“Nobody in the shepherding business ever loses track of a contact.” After another toot, Metzger piped down and managed a crooked grin. “I’ve got good news, Eddie. Pauly Corrente is dead.”
At that instant, the bathroom bulb burned out, blotting the room with a clap of darkness. A shudder passed through me. Could my fantasy have come true? It was as if by my musing I had summoned the news. “What happened?” I called out in the gloom.
“A light tip of scales put the old bones to rest,” Metzger said. “Pauly was going at it in the sack. That Jersey jerk left you half his estate. I figure you give me a third and we’re even. Plus there’s one more shepherd who gets a cut.”
I breathed a sigh of relief into the midst of the fragrant eclipse. The two-time mayor of America’s most congenial city had perished of causes not entirely unnatural, if abetted by over-exertion. The burden had been lifted from my conscience. There was no way I could hurt Pauly now, either by my reckless mishap with Apple Jack or by any other means.
Metzger was gassing on: “With the sensation you’ll cause by your return, it’s not too late to get in the mayor’s race. A person can make a lot of lucrative deals as a suburban politician, and you’re a shoe-in for the office, Eddie. As soon as we’re done in here we’ll get going to Ho-Ho-Kus?”
A bubble of indigestion caused me to bend double. “Are you kidding? There’s no way I can go back there.”
“What are you talking about? Most grifters would kill for this gig. Corrente lived like a king!”
The arrogant, flatulent parasite was aggravating my colic, and the fact that I couldn’t see him and show him I was angry got me even more worked up. “Pauly was a plumber. He made his billions in shit.”
“Now he’s buried in the garden state with the rest of the radioactive waste.”
“And then there’s Merry—I swear she was hitting on me.”
“So? You should shtup her! Merry’s part of the deal: the cherry atop the torte…”
“You’re talking about my mother, fucker!”
“… No dog, that’s for sure…”
“She happens to be the one I’m a son of, bitch.”
“… There’s probably a lot of ride left in that mare…”
“The lineage responsible for my long mules, jackass.”
“… Nice tits!”
“Quit it!”
Metzger grunted, let one rip. “So this female phobia of yours made you run from the Correntes?”
“And my dad, old man—so I wouldn’t kill my dad. Duh.”
“You’re fooling yourself, Eddie. Pauly wasn’t your pa.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let me tell you something about the brotherhood of herdsmen: We don’t meddle with each other’s indentures without permission. I was going to pocket your front money way back when, but an old friend, the shepherd I was talking about, gave me the okay to place you. You were so dead-set on finding out where you come from I figured I might as well make it some nice, fancy folks. Your timing was lucky; the Correntes were on the market.”
In the midst of all the wind, I had to be sure I had heard him correctly. I spelled it out in the funky void: “Pauly’s not my father and Merry’s not my mother?”
“No way. The mayor had some kind of problem with sperm count. Merry was never once pregnant. You have about as much match to Corrente DNA as me, Eddie.”
Metzger could not have given me a better present. Boom! I was a bastard again.
The door to my stall blasted open and a sudden spotlight burned my eyes. “Man! it stinks in here!” Cray said.
I squeezed my knees together and ducked the flashlight beam. Under the partition, I saw the toilet paper nestled at the foot of the bowl next-door, but the shoes were gone. Metzger wasn’t there. Whoa! I thought to myself, I must have been hallucinating. I had conjured a chimera. Pauly’s necrology and the rest of the conversation had been a dream within a dream, no more real than my daydream with Merry, but I had been unable to distinguish the fallacy. My fantasies were getting the better of me. This was what happened when a person with my luck dug up such submerged sludge.
“It’s a hostile outage, Eddie,” Cray said. “We’re not getting secondary power sources from anywhere on the grid.”
“Come on, Cray,” I said, shading my eyes. “There have always been flashes and flickers.” I crossed my legs and held a little bouquet of tissue at my lap.
“This one is different. The mayor
, in cahoots with the city council and the overlords of private utilities, called for a Sunday shut-off across selected sectors. That dirtbag Apple Jack cut off electrical service to the entire area above Dig City. Darkness, uninterrupted, consumes every tunnel.”
“But doesn’t this knock them out upstairs, too?”
“They’re ready to suck it up to flush us out from down under. Apple Jack knows we’ll run out of oxygen, and he has already announced that he anticipates a complete evacuation within twenty-four hours. Air. They’ve got us there.”
“But I thought we had temporary alternatives. Isn’t there anything we can finesse to get out of this mess?”
“Even with the backup generators, the clean air supply won’t last through the night. Within a few hours, toxicity will reach problem levels. By afternoon, every citizen will be subject to side effects like those of altitude sickness: nausea, dizziness, delirium. The end result could be asphyxiation.” Cray aimed the flashlight at my eyes. “What are you doing in here, anyway, Eddie?”
Squinting up into the beam, I said, “Uh, not feeling so hot.”
“Make it fast,” he said, shutting the stall door. “I’ve got to go rev up the generators.” Cray left the lavatory.
I should have seen it coming. The inception of his third term had given birth to the temperamental monarch in Apple Jack, and now our underground occupation was his first target. There had not been this kind of emergency since Miss Spinks had pulled that prank slamming the tunnel doors shut. If I did not come up with a solution expeditiously, it would mean the end of Dig City. But I was stuck. All I had been able to manage with my Merry fantasy was triggering a weird relapse. How had I let myself get so desperate? Then again, I had never been entirely stable. All along, those pathological impulses had just been suppressed. Now, with a crisis at hand, I was back to borderline, and frequent erotic exercise had left my imagination overdeveloped. Funny, I could swear I still sensed the Pep-O-mint.
Fast Eddie, King of the Bees: 1 Page 15
