One Hit Wonder

by Charlie Carillo

  I was disappointed and astounded at the same time. How the hell had she found me? And what the hell did she want?

  She could only want one thing. I shoved the paper in my pocket and headed for the door.

  “I don’t know what time I’ll be back!” I shouted to anyone who might have been listening.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I walked to the Little Neck railroad station and phoned Rosalind from there. She wanted to see me. I wanted to see anybody. I caught the train and reached Penn Station in half an hour.

  From there I walked all the way to Rosalind’s apartment, a glass and steel high-rise on Seventy-sixth Street and First Avenue. The doorman rang Rosalind’s apartment and looked me up and down before telling me to take the elevator to the thirty-eighth floor.

  Rosalind Pomer answered the door in a pink terrycloth bathrobe, seeming shorter and even wilder-haired than I’d remembered her, a pair of bifocals perched on the end of her nose. She dipped her head to regard me through the upper halves.

  “Well, I never thought I’d see you again.”

  It was awkward for both of us. How do you greet a stranger you screwed in the sky? In the end we both went for the clumsy peck on the cheek, and then she gestured for me to come inside.

  Piles of paperwork covered her living room table, and she’d obviously been burrowing her way through it when I phoned. The ashtrays were full and the air was ripe with mentholated smoke. She led me by the hand to the kitchen.

  “I’ll make a fresh pot of coffee.”

  “I didn’t know you smoked.”

  “How could you know? There’s no smoking on planes.”

  “Right…”

  “You lost weight. What’d you do, join a gym?”

  I shook my head. “I’m pushing a lawn mower these days.”

  “For a living?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t call it a living…. How the hell did you find me?”

  She shrugged. “I knew you weren’t going to Manhattan from the airport, so I figured you’d be in Queens. You said you’d come back for a family situation, so I started calling DeFalcos in Queens. Got to you on my third try. Pretty simple, really.”

  I didn’t like how easy it was for her to find me. I didn’t like that even slightly….

  She cocked her head. “Were you ever going to call me?”

  “I lost your card.”

  “Yeah, right,” she replied, but she was smiling when she said it. “Who took that message from me?”

  “That would be my mother.”

  “Not the friendliest person in the world, is she?”

  “You caught her at a bad time. Not that there’s ever a good time to catch her.”

  Rosalind poured boiling water through a deep cone filter into a clear glass coffeepot. It was black-as-dirt coffee, so different from the feeble stuff my mother percolated each morning, and then I noticed it had come from a Starbucks bag. Starbucks! My parents would have gone nuts!

  She filled a small pitcher with milk, put two mugs and a sugar bowl on a tray and asked me to carry it to the bedroom.

  I did as I was told. I set the tray down on the night table, and when I turned around she lay naked on the bed. The last thing she took off was her bifocals.

  “Okay, superstar. Let’s see if you’re any good on the ground.”

  She crossed her legs, patted the bedspread. It was like a bad porno film, the rich bitch summoning the gardener in for a quickie.

  “Can’t I have my coffee first?”

  She had to laugh. I had a swallow of coffee, damn good coffee, and then she put the lid on the pot and we got down to it. It was better in bed than it had been on top of the chemical toilet, and even though we climaxed at the same time, it was just a physical coincidence. The luck of the fuck, so to speak.

  Filmed in sweat, Rosalind poured herself a cup of coffee and lit a Newport. “Hey, man, you’re in some shape.”

  “Manual labor,” I said, and then I noticed a framed photo of Rosalind with a good-looking guy on what had to be a California beach. They were cheek to cheek and they looked happy.

  I pointed at the picture. “Your ex?”

  “My current.”

  “Oh.” Jesus Christ.

  “Relax, he lives in L.A. We’re doing the bicoastal thing.”

  The porn plot deepens. The rich bitch leading the dual life—a loyal partner on one coast, a roundheels on the other. And in midair.

  “He know you do things like this?”

  “I don’t do things like this. Not normally.”

  “Yeah? Why now?”

  She smiled, blushed, shrugged. “I’m really not sure. It goes against my better judgment.”

  We went at it again, slower and longer, and when we were through I really could have used a little nap, but she wanted to talk. She played with my chest hair in a way that was far too intimate for what we had going.

  “So you’re living with your parents.”

  “For the time being.”

  “What happened to you?”

  “Rosalind. I’d have to know you a lot better to go into it.”

  She sat up straight, pulling the sheet up around herself. Her face had become all points—her cheekbones, her chin, her nose, even her eyes.

  “You think you can just come here and fuck me, is that it?”

  “I came here because I was lonely. The fucking was your idea, you might recall. I’d have been happy with a cup of coffee.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “I mean that.”

  In a funny way, it was the truth. It was hard to be in Little Neck, knowing Lynn was just a few blocks away. This was a little escape for me, a vacation from obsession.

  Funny thing is, it only magnified my obsession. What the hell was I doing with this woman when I’d finally found my one and only Lynn?

  The phone rang. It was Rosalind’s boyfriend, of course, so I pulled on my pants and went to the living room. You get a hell of a view from the thirty-eighth floor, but something was funny about this place, and then it hit me. I put my hand over my head and touched the ceiling without even getting on my tiptoes. That’s how they did it with the new buildings—dazzle ’em with the view, and squeeze in as many floors as you can. An architectural trick that even a crafty lawyer could fall for….

  Rosalind came out in the bathrobe cinched tightly around her waist. “Sit down a minute, Mickey.”

  I did as I was told, on a deep, fluffy couch the color of blood. She stayed on her feet, so I knew a lecture was coming.

  “I’m not a whore, you know.”

  “Never said you were.”

  “Do you…like me?”

  “You’re good in bed. You’re good on toilet, too.”

  You can be a little cruel when you’re famous, or even when you’re a has-been. People sort of expect it, and people like Rosalind even like it a little bit.

  She covered her face with her hands. “I’m feeling all guilty about David now.”

  “So why’d you invite me up?”

  She hesitated. “David can’t hit it the way you can.”

  “Oh.”

  “He’s sweet, he tries, but…”

  She came to the couch and sat beside me. “It’s a structural problem, strictly structural. It has nothing to do with the way we feel about each other.”

  “Gotcha.”

  I couldn’t stifle a yawn. Rosalind smiled. “You’re tired. Go take a little nap while I get some work done. When you wake up, we’ll order in Chinese.”

  I went along with the plan. I conked out for a while and awoke with absolutely no idea of where I was. The bed was near the window, so the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was the blaze of the nighttime Manhattan skyline, far below. I dimly wondered if maybe I’d died and ascended to heaven.

  But Lynn wasn’t with me, so it couldn’t have been heaven. Then reality came crashing down as Rosalind appeared with a sack of Chinese food, a bottle of cold white wine and two glasses.

  We ate G
eneral Tso’s chicken and sipped the wine as we half-watched a CNN report about the chances of another terrorist attack in Manhattan. The anchorman mentioned the possibility of terrorists renting apartments in high-rises so they could blow them up, and that made Rosalind nervous, so she turned down the sound on the TV and pounced on me, determined to get in one last screw in the event that bombs were ticking in the basement of her building. We were back to the rough-and-ready stuff, which was okay by me, and when it was over I was exhausted, ready to sleep again, this time right through the night, if she’d let me.

  But she wanted to talk.

  “Hey, Mickey. What’s it like?”

  “What’s what like?”

  “To sing and hear all those girls screaming for you.”

  “Come on, Rosalind.”

  “I really want to know.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was one of them.”

  I sighed, sat up. “It’s…overwhelming.”

  “What else?”

  “Scary.”

  “What else?”

  “Lonely.”

  “Lonely?”

  “I was all alone up there. No band. Just me and the piano.”

  “But isn’t it a rush, hearing all those screams?”

  “You don’t really hear it. Mostly I was trying not to screw up out there. That takes a lot of concentration.”

  “Hey, Mickey.”

  “I’m still here.”

  She sat up in bed. “Sing it for me, will you?”

  “Huh?”

  “Sing ‘Sweet Days.’”

  She was as wide-eyed as a child awaiting a bedtime story, and she was dead serious. For the second time that day, I’d been asked to sing my damn song.

  “I left my piano at home.”

  “Come on. Please.”

  “I forget the words.”

  “Very funny. Come on, just this once.”

  “Roz, if there’s one sure thing in my life, it’s that I will never, ever sing that fucking song again.”

  “You don’t have to get hostile!”

  “I’m sorry. I just…”

  I was out of words, out of hope, out of everything. Rosalind left the bed and went to the kitchen with the leftover Chinese food and the plates. I’d deal with her rage when she came back. I was spent, totally spent. I actually dozed off and probably would have slept through the night, except that she woke me with the loudest shriek I’d ever heard.

  I ran to the kitchen to find Rosalind standing on a chair, pointing at the sink with a quaking finger.

  “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!”

  “What the hell happened?”

  She shut her eyes. Her nostrils widened with a deep, closed-mouth breath. “He’s in the sink. A mouse.”

  “A mouse?”

  “Or maybe it’s a rat. My God, could I have a rat in here? Holy shit, I’m going to have to move!”

  “Calm down, Roz.”

  She pointed a shaking finger. “He’s under the dishes. Unless he went down the drain…. Can they go down drains?”

  “How the hell should I know? Maybe he came up through the drain.”

  She clapped her hands over her face. “Get him out of here, Mickey. Please, get him out of here.”

  I crept to the sink. The plates we’d eaten off were in there, smeared with lo mein noodles. But one of the noodles was twitching, and it was pink. It was the tail of a tiny rodent, hiding beneath the dishes.

  I turned to Rosalind. “I’m guessing it’s a baby mouse.”

  “A baby?”

  “I can see the tail.”

  A shiver went through her. “Can you catch it?”

  I looked around the kitchen. An empty Häagen-Dazs ice cream container was in the garbage, the lid still on it. I grabbed it and removed the lid.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I’m going to try and catch him in this container.”

  “And then what?”

  “One thing at a time….”

  Container in my left hand, lid in the right, I hovered over the sink, trying to figure my next move. I could no longer see the twitching tail. Had he gone down the drain?

  I set down the lid and the container, gingerly removed the top plate. Then the one beneath it. There was just one plate to go. He had to be under it.

  Rosalind’s sink had a hose attachment with a spray nozzle. I tested it in the adjacent sink.

  “Mickey, what the hell are you doing?”

  “I’m gonna soak him so he can’t jump.”

  “Ohh, Jesus…”

  Hose in hand, I lifted the last plate and soaked the sink. At first I thought there was nothing there, but sure enough, a tiny gray blob was struggling in the drain. A baby mouse. He shook the water off his marble-sized head and blinked his shining eyes at me.

  I grabbed the ice cream container and the lid. The mouse struggled up past the lip of the drain, and it was easy to coax him into the container. I clapped the lid on top, and that was that.

  Rosalind was still standing on the chair. “Did you get him?”

  “I got him.” I could feel the little guy hopping around in the ice cream container.

  Rosalind stepped off the chair and sat down on it. She hugged herself as if a winter wind was blowing through the kitchen.

  “I don’t understand it,” she said through chattering teeth. “This is a brand-new building. We’re thirty-eight stories up. How could a mouse get in here?”

  “Nature finds a way, you know?”

  “Kill him.”

  “What?”

  “Kill him. Squash the container.”

  “I can’t kill him!”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we’re both named Mickey.”

  “Oh, that is just hilarious.”

  “I’ll take him outside and turn him loose.”

  “Loose?”

  Container in hand, I went to the bedroom and put my clothes on. Roz was waiting for me at the front door.

  “At least take him a block or two away, or he’ll come back to my sink.”

  I couldn’t help laughing. “Yeah, right. He’s got a little homing device in his brain.”

  “Well, if he did, it wouldn’t bring him here, I can tell you that much.”

  Her voice had changed. She was angry, despite my heroics, glowering at me through narrowed eyes.

  “Got something you want to say to me, Roz?”

  She hesitated, then spat it out.

  “This is your fault. You brought him here.”

  “How the fuck did I do that?”

  “On your clothes. He was hiding in your pants, or something. It’s the only way he could have gotten in.”

  The porn plot thickens: the filthy gardener fouling the palace of the princess, high in the sky. Carrying vermin, along with his substantial tool.

  I was giggling. I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want to help it.

  “I brought him here from Little Neck. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “I don’t know where he came from, but you brought him in. It’s the only way.” She shivered. “The only way,” she repeated.

  I almost felt sorry for her, but not sorry enough to be nice.

  “You’re a snob, Roz, you know that?”

  “If I were a snob, would I be fucking you?”

  It was a good point, and she made it well, as a good lawyer should.

  Little Mickey was bouncing around in the Häagen-Dazs container. I was tempted to let him out, but stopped myself. I didn’t want him to die. So instead, I kissed Rosalind on the forehead.

  “Maybe you’re right, Roz. Maybe I did bring him with me, some way, somehow. But if I didn’t, remember this—he’s just a baby. That means he’s part of a litter. And mice have big litters.”

  I waited for it to register on her terrified face, then left the apartment. Suddenly I was out on the street, looking for a place to free my little friend. Who, by the way, had probably arrived with the Chinese foo
d. Hopped into the bag in that greasy restaurant kitchen just before the illegal alien delivery boy from Hong Kong stapled the bag shut, slung it into his bicycle basket, and rode the wrong way up First Avenue to Roz’s building.

  Even at three A.M. there were cars and buses all over the streets. I didn’t want little Mickey to get squashed. The world seemed like an incredibly dangerous place for such a little life. There was only one thing to do.

  I started walking west, toward Central Park. I figured he’d stand a chance in there. I crossed Fifth Avenue and leaned over the park wall, ice cream container in hand.

  “Good luck, little guy.”

  I popped off the lid. He dropped to the ground and vanished with a hop into the foliage. Then I began the long trip back to Little Neck.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The sun was rising and birds were chirping as I made my way to my bedroom, where I collapsed until Sunday afternoon. I staggered down the stairs to the kitchen, where my mother was salting a roast beef in a pan full of chopped onions. The kitchen reeked with the smell of them.

  “Well. Look who’s alive.”

  “Barely…where’s Dad?”

  “Watching the ball game.”

  I was puzzled. I couldn’t hear the TV set.

  “At the Little Neck Inn,” she added.

  I could barely believe what I’d just heard. “Dad’s at a bar?”

  She nodded, shook pepper on the roast.

  “He never went to bars!”

  “Things change, Michael. And no, you didn’t.”

  “I didn’t what?”

  “You didn’t get any more phone calls last night.”

  She knew just how to stick it to me. I headed for the door.

  “Where are you off to now?”

  “Taking a walk.”

  “Well, walk to the bar and tell your father we’re eating at four.”

  The Little Neck Inn wasn’t what I had in mind as a destination, but orders are orders.

  I’d never been there before. I’d moved to L.A. before I’d reached the legal drinking age, so I’d never partaken of the charms of the neighborhood’s most popular gin mill.