Sensing its imminent violation, the ostrich hissed and raised one massively muscled foot, its killing claws extended. A healthy adult male ostrich can weigh over two hundred pounds, run at thirty miles per hour, and gut a lion with one kick. Herb and Flaunt tensed for one final, mutually destructive pounce.
“Stop!”
Herb glared at me. Flaunt scowled, one oily lock of his Elvis pompadour dangling between his eyes. The ostrich glanced over at me, its deadly foot held at the ready.
“You know these people?”
“Yes. They’re harmless.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You’re right. They’re idiots.”
“I don’t have to put up with this. I’ve done television.”
“Why don’t you take five?” I said. “I’ll smooth their feathers.”
The ostrich – whose name was Sauwk – hissed a reluctant assent, and spread its wings in a threat posture intended mostly to intimidate. The big bird was exhausted. I sympathized: long experience with Herb and his passions could wear down the Rock of Gibraltar. I stroked his neck while silently appealing to his professionalism with compliments and offers of future employment.
“Hey, Jacques Cousteau, why don’t you marry the bastard if you love it so much?”
Do it. Reverse his digestive system. No one will notice.
I untwisted the orange extension cord dangling from Sauwk’s neck and invited him to enjoy more Puppy Chow. Sauwk released six eggsized fecal pellets in Herb’s general direction and strutted back to his food bucket.
“What’d ya have to stick your nose in it for?” Flaunt sneered. “Herbie and me would’ve got the situation under control just fine without you, Mister Save the Whales.”
“You know, Chick, if you’re trying to insult someone, pointing out their better qualities is pointless unless you’re trying to make them feel really great.”
“Oooohhh, somebody flunked out of his fancy graduate school. Hey, Emily Post, how ’bout pitchin’ yerself into that saddle? Then Herb can ride you around for the commercial!”
Flaunt laughed in the irritating way he did when he thought he’d scored a point. I reconsidered burning him alive just to make a bigger one.
“We’re doing a new spot for the website,” Herb said. “That damn pelican has thrown us off schedule. We’re gonna have to do it tomorrow: I got meetings.”
“Hey, Pop. Can I borrow some money?”
“Jesus H The Christ,” Flaunt moaned. “Kids today, ingrates… every one of ’em. Hell I remember…”
“Give him a break, Chick.”
“Herbie this kid’s had more ‘breaks’ than a mirror with a million cracks. Back in the day…”
“Chick…”
“…my old man would’a kicked my ass harder than Chinese algebra. I mean if you ask me…”
“I didn’t ask you, Chick!”
Flaunt threw up his hands in a “why do I bother” flutter of exasperation, his Elvis pompadour flapping like a detached scalp. Then he turned on one elevated heel and stomped off to annoy the camera crew.
Herb turned back to me, shaking his head.
“I suppose I’ll be paying for that till Judgement Day. Why the hell do you need money?” (Herb could switch conversational gears faster than a newly-avowed lesbian at a Texas prolife rally.) “Don’t I pay you enough to mismanage this place?”
“I want to take Surabhi somewhere special Friday night. But I need a minor advance.”
“Hey! You thinking about poppin’ the question, son?”
“Well…”
“You are, aren’t you? You’re gonna ask Sonoma–”
“Her name is Surabhi for the seventy-eighth time this week. And there’s not going to be any wedding.”
Herb’s face fell. “No wedding?”
Herb loved the institution of marriage. That was the problem: he loved the institution more than the woman he married. He could also smell imminent weddings and pregnancies like a bloodhound on the hunt.
“I see,” he sighed, laying a smallish hand on my elbow. “Step into my office, son. Time you and me talked mano to mano.”
“I have to watch the front desk. The customers…”
“What customers? We don’t open till ten.”
“But...”
“Come on.”
We entered the Fortress of Gratitude: Herb believed that every employee who entered his office should do so with “An Attitude of Gratitude.” He’d even had the words inscribed on a little plaque on the wall behind his big mahogany desk; right between his autographed poster of Ronald Reagan and the life-sized standup of himself dressed as “Super Herb.”
“Sit.”
I sat in the small chair in front of his desk. Herb rifled through his drawers and came up with a wrapped sandwich.
“You hungry?”
“No thanks.” Two days after the fight with Zeus, the thought of food still made me slightly delirious.
“You look like a damn scarecrow. You need to eat if you’re ever going to get your full growth.”
Herb munched thoughtfully on his turkey and tomato wrapped in lettuce. He’d been on a low-carb diet for half a decade. Because of long-term glycogen deprivation he was sometimes subject to erratic behavior. Sometimes, at night I would catch him waltzing with a box of Raisin Bran, crooning “I’m gonna eat you. Oh yes… I’m gonna… eeeat…”
“Lando Cooper… I know who you really are.”
“What?”
“The jig is up, son. I’ve uncovered your big, cosmic secret.”
He chuckled again, his eyes round with a kind of conspiratorial wonder. “God Almighty.”
From my dimensionally sensitive multi-mind, several Aspects tossed up suggestions.
Sky Daddy: “Rewrite his memory.”
Father Flies: “Erase him from the spacetime continuum.”
Burning Bush: “Give him a stroke, then if he recovers you can tell him it was all a hallucination.”
“If you think I haven’t been paying attention, son… you’re wrong.” Herb reached up with one mayonnaise smeared finger and tapped his right temple. “These eyes don’t miss a trick. As a student of the Human Animal… I see all.”
Herb arched his brows. “Look at me, Lando. Look me in the eye when I’m talking to you.”
“I am looking at you.”
“No you’re not.”
“I am.”
“Unflinchingly?”
“You’re insane.”
Herb stood. “Lando… a steady, unflinching gaze…”
“‘…establishes interpersonal tactical dominance.’ I know, Pop.”
“That’s Herb’s Rule of Engagement Numero Uno, son. First thing any effective negotiator learns… if he intends to make something of himself someday.”
“I’m not interested, Pop.”
“Lando, I know that you’re struggling with certain elements of your personality. And although I don’t claim to understand it...”
“Pop, I just want to borrow some cash.”
“Son… you’re gay.”
“Pop.”
“It’s OK, Lando.”
“I’m not gay.”
“Well I think you are.”
“I am not.”
“Admit it now. Get it off your chest.”
“No.”
“Denial. That’s sad, boy.”
“I’m not gay!”
“Twenty-first century, son. Liberation done come to de plantation. I may not approve of your lifestyle, but I’ll die to support you. That’s why we all marched, back in the Sixties...”
“Pop…”
“…why my generation took to the streets while ‘Mister Charlie’ was burning school children and night-bombing churches…”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“I marched so that you and your brothers could be as irresponsible as the White Man’s children...”
“I’m not doing this with you, Pop.”
“…waste your
lives in whatever meaningless pursuits you see fit, no matter how much it might break the hearts of those who sang freedom songs while Klansmen hounded us with dogs and torches.”
“Torches? Were they chasing black people or Frankenstein’s monster?”
Herb chuckled again. “Deflect and Distract: another useful negotiating strategy. When you take over the store…”
“I’m not taking over the store, Pop.”
“…when you take over from your ailing old man, you’ll have to be strong, son. Stronger than those early pioneers.”
Herb reached into his pocket and produced a thickish wad of cash from the billfold he’d had surgically grafted to his hip. He thumbed through the wad and peeled five one hundred dollar bills.
“I want you to take Sabrina out Friday night. Show her a good time. Grab a hotel room in the Loop. Do the deed, for Christ’s sake. You’re not still a virgin are you?”
“No! Not that it’s any of your business.”
Herb held up his hand. “Just be sure to take your gal out for a ‘test drive’. Nobody wants you puttin’ your money down on the wrong horse. You know… genderwise. One thing about me and your mother… we were sexual dynamite.”
“Awkward for me, but thanks for spoiling my appetite.”
A glint of calculation ignited in Herb’s eyes. “So when are we gonna meet this ‘young lady’ of yours?”
“Soon,” I said, relieved that I wouldn’t have to excise him from the spacetime continuum. “I gotta get back to work. Inventory today.”
“Hmmm, yes. Interesting concept: inventory.”
I reached over and grabbed for the money. Herb yanked his hand back.
“Lando, you know if there’s ever anything you need to get off your chest, you can always come to me, right?”
“I know.”
“I’m much more open than your mother. God knows how we ever produced four healthy sons...”
“Pop, please.”
“Sorry. It’s just, living like we do… well things with Mom and Dad aren’t as rosy as they seem.”
“Rosy’s not the word that springs to mind.”
Herb smiled. But a flicker of sadness glimmered in his eyes.
“True, son. Very true.”
He extended the handful of bills toward me again. I reached for it, and he jerked his hand back once more as if he’d just snatched it out of a furnace.
“How about you mow the lawn Saturday morning?”
“Pop...”
“Come on now. I pay you for working here to show you the value of a buck, not to take the honeys out for a tour of Boy’s Town.”
“On what you pay me, ‘Boy’s Town’ would have to be the size of a postage stamp.”
“Hey, any time free room and board get too rough for your delicate sensibilities…”
“Alright… I’ll mow the lawn.”
“Front and back?”
“Yes!”
“And clean the mower blades?”
“I could strangle you.”
“Excellent. Nothing in life sweeter than a ‘twofer’, son. That’s…”
“I know: ‘Twice the goods and/or services for half the price’.”
“Damn right. Well? Get back to work.”
I remembered my promise to intercede on Sauwk’s behalf.
“Why an ostrich?”
Herb shrugged. “The elephant was double booked.”
“The ostrich won’t let you ride, Pop. He’s got arthritis.”
“Really?”
“Yup. Why not try letting Chick try to lasso it in the background while you riff in the foreground? That way you get to improvise, and the audience gets a twofer.”
At the word “improvise” Herb’s face brightened. He was a frustrated actor who fancied himself a master of improvisation. If he hadn’t feared what he called “…an actor’s life, filled with uncertainty” he would have auditioned for Second City. That and his polite phobia of Jews kept him from pursuing a career in show business.
“You’re right. Ostriches are funny without having to try.”
“Alright.”
“And Chick and I can riff till the cows come home. People love it when we riff. That’ll help him pull his panties out of his ass.”
Herb picked up the office phone and dialed Flaunt’s extension. As I headed for the door to the Fortress of Gratitude, he called out to my retreating back.
“Have fun with Susanna, son. Loosen up a little.”
“OK, Pop.”
“And get a haircut. You look like a goddamn spear chucker.”
I pocketed the money and hurried back to work.
CHAPTER IV
ARCHANGEL
At noon, I took an early lunch and headed for Chicago Kutz, a barbershop I had avoided since returning home from Northwestern. But I’d decided to take Herb’s advice: the ’fro was getting a little unruly.
Surabhi and I had been dating seriously for nearly two years. We’d met during a jazz appreciation concert series at Northwestern. The attraction was immediate, the chemistry undeniable. However, I was housebound, still at the mercy of my parents’ escalating war of words. The atmosphere at home was toxic to a burgeoning romance. And since Surabhi shared her small apartment with her younger sister, we had no safe place to go when we wanted to be alone.
I had, of course, experimented with women on the road. A sexual darkhorse, I lost my virginity when I was twenty years old. But my less than imposing stature and sub-standard physique had made successfully wooing conscious women fairly uncommon.
Let’s face it: the irony of my particular situation is that I could “seduce” any woman on the planet, if I were as psychotic as some of my colleagues. Many mortals long to offer themselves to their gods. Zeus ravaged thousands of females, human and otherwise, before he retired to Milwaukee.
The Morrigan, Celtic goddess of war and sex, nearly killed Ireland’s greatest mortal hero, Cuchulainn, for refusing her untimely advances. Since she’d appeared to him during a pitched battle, clothed in her ugliest Aspect, a reasonable deity might assume a modicum of understanding on her part. But this was not the case: the Morrigan’s rampant horniness nearly caused the extinction of the Irish race. I’ve had to speak to her about it at several Conventions. Last year she chased Shango the West African Thunder God into the men’s room at the Boca Raton Days Inn. The two of them nearly reflooded the Gulf Coast. On my last custodial visit I’d barely escaped with my life. I was twenty-three that hot summer, and although the Morrigan is one of the sexiest immortals in existence, she scared the crap out of me. Currently she’s a short, dowdy redhead with thick ankles living in South Boston. She remains unapologetic.
As I walked through the door of Chicago Kutz, my heart was thrashing like an overactive ferret, my mind flashing through a sweaty laundry list of the things I planned to do with Surabhi in our lovers’ suite at the Four Seasons. Beneath my admittedly turgid exterior there thrummed a brief but intense lifetime of frustrated sensuality bursting to express itself.
“Well, I’ll be damned!” a big voice boomed. “Is that Young Billy Dee struttin’ through my door?”
Lumbering toward me across the haircovered floor was the loudest mortal I knew.
“Look at that head. Man, you look like a damn spear chucker!”
Beaufort “BoomBoom” Biggs was exactly that. He was immense in every way a big thing can be. One of his hands could envelop the top of a normal man’s head. At exactly seven feet tall, he weighed three hundred and seventy pounds, most of it muscle covered by a thickening layer of fat. He’d played as a defensive lineman for the Chicago Bears back in the late Seventies, helping his teammates to a historic win during Superbowl X. An avid chef, BoomBoom had used his NFL earnings to buy out the Jigaboos family restaurant chain that dotted the Midwest until the early Eighties. By the early twenty-first century, BoomBoom’s Bigghouse soulfood restaurants had given Type 2 diabetes and hypertension to legions of fat-happy Midwesterners.
BoomBoom h
ad even done a commercial for my father; the one in which Herb, wearing a Chicago Bears jersey, helmet and shoulder pads, stands on the fifty yard line at Soldier’s Field during a game between the Bears and the Cleveland Browns, and proclaims, “I’m so crazy about my customers I’ll take a tackle from BoomBoom Biggs to prove it!” As Herb was rolled off the field to the thunderous appreciation of twelve thousand screaming fans, a guilty BoomBoom had accompanied him all the way to the ambulance. Five fractured ribs and a collapsed lung later, the two had become fast friends. When Herb learned that Biggs occasionally dabbled in local community theater, their fates were officially conjoined.
“Damn shame lettin’ your hair get that messy,” BoomBoom hollered. “How you expect people to take you seriously with hair like that?”
“Whaddup, BoomBoom?” His criticism was light artillery compared to the emotional massacre that was Life on the Cooper Plantation. “How’s that last stomach staple holdin’ up?”
“Uh oh,” one of Kutz’s barbers snarked. “Showtime.”
Like most Southside barbershops, Kutz was a place where verbal jousting was the price of admission; where jabs were traded and not only hair got cut. At Kutz, the big dogs ran the show, and BoomBoom Biggs was the biggest dog in town. But fortunately for me, I was raised by wolves.
“Oh, wait a minute now,” BoomBoom thundered. “You wanna play the Dozens, Billy Dee? You’re messin’ with the master!”
“Looks like the only thing you’ve ‘mastered’ is a knife and fork. Call me when you master some situps!”
This evoked a shout of approval from the customers. Ol’ Luke, BoomBoom’s oldest employee and neighborhood instigator, shuddered like a man caught in a violent icestorm.
“Ooh, he got you right out the gate, Beaufort! Young Billy Dee came in swingin’!”
“Least I had a six-pack, once,” BoomBoom crowed, flexing his still massive biceps. “Man, don’t you know you’re looking at the first man in Chicago to deadlift five hundred pounds? Ask your mama: she’s still got my fingerprints on her butt!”
The bystanders howled. “Now that was ugly!”
I was about to launch into a rant about the Bigghouse’s high customer mortality rate when reality ripped itself apart.
The rupture started in the mirror right behind BoomBoom; glowing concentric circles spreading like ripples across a quiet lake. Then a pale hand as large as a minivan reached out of the mirror and passed, wraithlike, through BoomBoom’s body. If it had been “real” in any corporeal sense, BoomBoom would have been skewered by a forefinger the length of a stop sign. As it was, nobody noticed. The finger stopped a few inches from my face. The nail was black, and covered with shooting stars.
Last God Standing Page 4
