by Robert Ward
“I’m sorry, Howard; I mean, you were laughing. You told me it was funny.”
“Yes, my dear,” he says, no trace of a smile on his face. “I did tell you it was funny. And now, my darling, I am telling you that it is not funny. It’s not funny at all that these two boys, for that is surely what they are, mere boys, have gotten so destitute of both material wealth and imagination that they feel compelled to try a little trick so banal and absurd as a fake-watch hustle.”
Howard turns and stares at us. He is big, fat and slick. I want to hate him, to scream at him, but I feel little, skinny and ridiculous. I wait for some kind of vicious counterattack from Phantom, but one look at his face tells me that he feels the same way I do. Howard looks like a wall that will collapse on us. I want to run out of the bar and call for help.
“So you boys thought that you could fool old Howard with that one, hey? Let me tell you kids something. I was hustling magnoleum back in the thirties…. Didn’t think I was that old, did you now? Well-preserved, hey? the old magnoooooo-lllllleeeeeuuumm sales, as the jungle bunnies used to call it.
That was a small-time thing, sure, but it had more class than this. Fake linoleum. Every spear-chucker wanted it. Paid through their ass for it. Stuff lasted about two weeks….” Phantom is off laughing again.
“Wonderful,” he says. “That’s exactly how long the Feldstar lasts. Two weeks to the minute. Then pop, the hands come off, the little calendar starts running backward and the watch-band turns green.”
“Brothers,” says Howard, getting up from his seat. He comes behind us and puts his big arms around our shoulders.
“You boys are exact replicas of myself at your age. Really. Two cocky punks think you got the world by the balls. I like it. I like it fine. Don’t you like it, Alice?”
“I like it,” she says. “I like it fine.”
Howard darts toward her, grabs her arm and twists it behind her back.
“Did I notice a trace … a mere trace of witchery in your voice? Oh, tell me that I didn’t, dear Alice. Do not confirm my worst suspicions, thereby forcing me to give these fine plucky rascals your deeply tanned arm as a souvenir.”
“You’re hurting me,” she says.
“Let her alone,” says Phantom, slapping Howard’s big shoulders. “What does she know?”
“Correct,” says Howard. “A woman. Her function in the world is threefold. Dinner cooker. Childbearer. Fuck tool. Outside of those three laudable but brainless capacities, she is like a small bird lost in a den of lions.”
“Hey, you are pretty heavy with words,” says Phantom. “You some kind of writer?”
“Ah, the arts. The arts,” says Howard, gesturing expansively. “You are acquainted with them? Not only a small-time hustler, but an artist as well? I see, I see. Rimbaud. And Baudelaire. Living for the moment. Trying desperately to transcend the petty-bourgeois environments from which you both undoubtedly sprang by reveling in the exotic, the criminal. Why, you two are heroes of your age. Did you hear that, Alice? I said that these two …”
“I heard you, Howard,” she says.
Phantom is transfixed. I am not. If I were only a little stronger (my back is hurting like mad—it’s been that way ever since the Taco), I would leap at this fat bigmouth and gut him like a lion guts his prey. I shouldn’t have thought that, used those words, that metaphor. It is exactly like one that Howard would use. Oh, my God, is this my next horror? To be a walking, talking verbal pyrotechnician with a fat head and a stone cold heart? I am sick. Warren is already turning, turning to a small, scale-model Howard in my brain. I won’t do it. I won’t look.
“Well, then,” says Howard, holding his drink up in a toast, “if destiny has proclaimed that we four should spend the night together, then perhaps you two phantoms of the night can show us some new and forbidden pleasure.”
I nudge Phantom. He turns around, looks at me with hostile eyes. Is he being charmed by this degenerate?
“What is it, man?”
“Let’s go,” I say. “We still got the air-conditioners and the fake diamonds to unload. There’s no future with this guy.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Ah, they are talking it over, Alice,” says Howard. “Do you hear them mumbling a silent or nearly silent judgment on us: ‘Squares. Idiots. Nowhere people. Let’s ditch ‘em.’ But, Alice, both you and I know that is mere rationalization. They will ditch us, for they know that I have seen through their little pathetic attempts at originality, their meek, bourgeois souls. They are afraid of true decadence. You and I, Alice. The real thing. They melt from our nauseating radiance.”
“Oh, Howard,” says Alice, “will you please shut up?”
“So you wanna come with us?” says Phantom. “All right. Let’s go. I got some things for you to see that will turn you around.”
“Phantom,” I say. But it’s no use. His long face is drawn tense, and his big yellow teeth are gleaming.
“Lead on, O two-bit Rabelais,” cries Howard as we march like prisoners from the bar.
Phantom is taking Howard and Alice on a guided tour of the Greta Garbo Hotel for Boys and Girls. Our room is on the third floor, and I am feeling like someone has filled my vessels with cancer cells. Weak. Swooning. I hope to God Mal isn’t up there. Her room is two doors down from ours, and the shame and disgust I now feel will be tripled if she catches Phantom and me “proving ourselves” to this creep and his forlorn (though beautiful—all the girls I meet are always beautiful, a mockery of their inner void) wife. So far on our trip, Phantom has shown Howard Crazy Joe’s room with its thirteen locks. Crazy Joe is seen rarely. He is a Japanese beatnik who sits in his room taking drugs all day. He sits in his room all night too, the only difference being that he is usually coming down off the drugs then, and entertains the rest of the floor by howling and smashing furniture. Phantom knocks on his door. Crazy Joe curses in Japanese, and Howard shakes all over.
“Marvelous, marvelous,” he says. “This dispels once and for all the idea that Orientals are endowed with the secrets of the peaceful soul.”
Our next visit is to Little Deena’s room. She is fourteen, an acid freak, and lives with Big Hal, a former Jehovah’s Witness. Now he is into acid too, and they both show us their many religious books.
“You can only understand these if you are stoned, man,” says Hal. He and Deena weigh about a hundred and forty pounds combined. I look at their bony bodies and know that they will soon go mad or die.
Out in the hall, Phantom and Howard are arm in arm.
“Cretins,” says Howard. “Pure golden cretins. Oh, show me more, more.”
We go upstairs. On the steps is a dead rat. Howard picks it up by its tail, feigns eating it and tosses it into the face of Alice. She screams, and he almost collapses with laughter.
“In here lives Jerry, the Boy Who Ruins Lives,” says Phantom.
We open the door to his room. Jerry is stark naked. In front of him is a young girl with an expensive-looking leather coat. Jerry is endowed with a baby face, and his blond hair is combed perfectly. He grabs the girl’s small head, and she licks his cock.
“Hey, you guys,” he says, “come on in. The liberation of Sandy Keller is about to begin.”
Howard starts to go in, but Phantom closes the door.
“Why settle for that?” says Phantom. “I have a much greater treat in store for you.”
That was not Phantom’s voice. It was Howard’s. He is being taken over by Howard. I feel my own flesh being dissolved, shoved roughly out of the way, Howard’s flesh moving in.
“Phantom,” I say meekly, “I’ve got to get some air. You take these people up to the room. I’m going for a walk.”
They won’t let me. Phantom has one arm, Howard the other. They are marching me up to the third floor.
“No copping out, Bobby,” says Phantom. “We are … how’d you put it, Howard?”
“We are but children of destiny. Ships passing in the night. Come on, kid. You wanted to
play games. Well, we’re playing them.”
I look at Alice. She drops her eyes.
In the room. It’s colored with the posters we put up just yesterday. I remember Mal and me tacking them there, and I stared at them with wonder. Psychedelic art. It seemed like some kind of ultimate breakthrough. I felt big, strong, like a pioneer. Now I can’t look at them. Cheap, phony, nothing. Howard inside me. My T-shirt disintegrating, and a blue pinstripe suit taking its place. My stomach bulging, hanging over my belt. Like Baba Looie. Like Howard.
“So, good gurus,” says Howard, sitting down on our one chair, “when does the mystery begin? So far all I’ve seen is petty perversity. I am beginning to think you can’t deliver the goods. That would be truly pathetic, beneath pity.”
I am sitting against the wall. It occurs to me that Howard is crazy. Violence. He will be fast and big and maybe even pull a knife.
Phantom is pacing the room. He stops, looks at Howard and smiles. Alice is sitting at Howard’s feet, like a puppy. He smiles at her, puts one giant hand on her breasts.
“We could all fuck Alice,” he says, “but then I’d be supplying the entertainment. Perhaps what you two need is some form of motivation. Some capitalist incentive. I’ll tell you what. If you can deliver to my satisfaction, I’ll pay you one hundred dollars. Cash.”
He reaches into his pocket, pulls out the wad of bills and takes two fifties from the top. His big white fingers crease them, make a snapping noise.
“So?”
I want to smash his face. But he has cut through me, reduced me to something small, without fur or covering, a long-necked chicken waiting for the ax.
“Fifty, huh?” says Phantom. He rubs his hands together, runs his lizard tongue around his mouth. “O.K., Howard. You wanna do something? I got just the thing.”
Phantom walks over to our small drawer and opens it with a key. He reaches far back into it, looking at Howard all the time, smiling. Howard is smiling back. They are like lovers locked together, sinking to the bottom of the sea.
“Cut the lights, Bobby.”
I get up and go to the door.
The room is black.
Phantom lights a candle.
“Oh, wonderful,” says Howard. “What now, Maharishi, the Ouija Board?”
“You dig this effect, man?”
“Most intriguing.”
“O.K. Now I got something special for you to smoke. Then I’m gonna take you on a little trip. I never shared this with nobody before.”
Though I am sick, I immediately go hot with jealousy. Phantom and I are brothers. He can’t get away with this. I’ll call Freda and tell her. I won’t play with him anymore.
“Do I detect some bitterness from your friend, Bobby?” says Howard. “It was inevitable that someone should come and depose you as the object of your hideous demonic friend’s affections.”
“Shut the fuck up,” I say. I’ll go out on the ledge and pretend to jump. Then Phantom will be sorry. I scratch my arm deep to purge weakness.
“I was in the Orient,” says Phantom, sitting down cross-legged in front of Howard and Alice.
“And while you were there you learned the way to cloud men’s minds.”
Don’t go on, Phantom, stop now. I can’t look at Phantom.
He looks small, pale, ridiculous. Every word Howard speaks shatters Phantom. I could be working for the state making a nice salary. I could save up and buy season tickets to Colt games. Howard.
“Yeah, man, I was in the Orient, and this guy laid some lessons on me in guiding people on journeys. You dig it?”
Howard is quiet, but he is smiling like a serpent.
“So if you smoke this red powder here, I can take you into some places in your head, you see?”
“Dig, cool.”
Alice is twisting around.
“I don’t want to, Howard,” she says.
He pats her head.
“Are you or are you not Mrs. Howard Zucker?”
“Oh, Howard, you know I am, it’s just that …”
“Give me the pipe,” says Howard.
Phantom finishes spreading the tin foil on the pipe and dumps a little red powder on it. Howard grabs it away from him and sticks it in Alice’s mouth.
“In sickness and in health, in death do we part.” He smiles.
She pulls her head away, but Howard seizes her chin.
“No, Howard,” she gasps. “I don’t want to.”
“Smoke, bitch. Smoke the pipe.”
He waves his right hand like a minstrel singer, and Phantom lights the match.
She gives in and smokes it, but is unable to hold it down long. The candle is flickering shadows all over her face. Her eyes are wide open, in panic. Howard grabs the pipe himself.
“Disgusting,” he says. “The wife of Howard K. Zucker responding to the exotic like a Victorian.”
Phantom relights the pipe and Howard takes a tremendous breath. Then he slides to the floor and leans back on his hands. His stomach is moving in-out, in-out. Phantom is smiling.
I move closer and watch Howard’s face. It is perfectly calm, mocking. Alice has fallen straight back and is gasping. I go over to her and hold her hand.
“Oh my God,” she says. “It’s like …”
She can’t say anything else. Her face is frozen.
“When’s this stuff hit?” says Howard. Then he is falling straight back. He begins to swallow, gropes at the blanket. Phantom is leaning on top of him, grabbing his chin.
“Look right into my eyes,” he says. “Right now, Howard.”
I pick up Alice, take her into the kitchen and throw water onto her face. She is crying hysterically. I feel sick. Want to race in and grab Phantom, smash Howard. What the hell is wrong with me? We’ve proved our point.
“What the hell is it, Warren? What is wrong?”
“Cockledoodle dooo, cockledoodle dooo.”
I look into the front room. Phantom is standing over Howard, yelling, “And what does the rooster tell the farmer each and every sunny morning?”
Howard is stooping on the floor. His fingers are wriggling claws. His eyes are bulging.
“Cockledoodle doooooooo.”
“Right,” says Phantom. “And now maybe the rooster is thirsty?” Howard nods his head vigorously.
Phantom unzips his fly, pulls out his cock and pisses in his face. Howard laughs and falls down.
“What does the rooster say?” yells Phantom.
“Cockledoodle dooo. Ahhhh cockledoodle dooo.”
I should have known. Phantom wasn’t taken in. I should feel happiness. I’m gonna feel happiness. I run in the room, dropping Alice on the floor.
“Let me try it?” I yell.
“Sure,” says Phantom.
“What does the rooster say?” I yell.
“Cockledoodle dooo,” yells Howard. His mouth is wide open and his tongue is going in-out.
I take out my cock and piss on him. The urine runs down his face, stains his blue striped shirt. I grab his tie and yank him around in a circle.
“You sonofabitch,” I yell. “You rotten sonofabitch.”
“That’s it, baby,” yells Phantom. He is on Howard’s back, and I am pulling Howard forward.
“Rooster loves the farmer,” yells Phantom. “Give him a ride, anytime. Yeah.”
Alice is up now. She looks at us, screams and then starts laughing.
“Let me ride him,” she yells. “Let me.”
She leaps on Howard’s back and I yank him forward. He begins to scream. I am having fun. I am getting even. The sonofabitch can’t get away with this shit, can’t tell us the truth about ourselves. We’ll show the sonofabitch. Going round and round in circles, the candlelight flickering amoebas all over the wall, and the screams over and over and over, “Cockledoodle dooooooo.”
Then there is a knock at the door. Perfect. Perfect. I know who it is. “Come in, Mal,” I yell.
She walks in the door, stares at us and then closes it.
Phantom jumps off Howard and runs after her. I let go of the tie and sink down on the floor. Alice is crying again, holding her hands over her face.
“He’ll kill me,” she says. “When he wakes up from this, he’ll kill me.”
I look at her. There’s nothing to do. I can hear Phantom yelling at Mal out in the hall, explaining the whole scene. Howard is rolling over on his back now, rubbing his face. I reach over, grab his arm and pull him up. He nearly crushes me. Mal and Phantom come back in the room. “Get him a cab,” I say.
“Fuck him, throw him out in the street. Her too, that sniveling bitch.”
Phantom reaches down on the chair and grabs the two fifties.
“Get him a cab,” I say. “He did me a favor.” I can’t look at Mal. My hands are shaking again. “I’ll call one,” says Mal.
“What do you mean, he did you a favor?” says Phantom. “Nothing, just being melodramatic.” Phantom looks at me, through me. “Told you where you were at, did he?”
“Just help me get him downstairs.”
Phantom nods his head. This is the end of something. He grabs Howard under his sweating arm and we drag him toward the door. All the way down the steps Howard is laughing and mumbling to himself, “What does the rooster say? ‘Cockledoodle doooooooo.’ “
XXX.
Our Hero Has Love and Lessons on the Beach
Mal and I are walking on the beach, holding hands, watching and listening to the ocean. Even Warren is silent. It should be an ideal scene, and I want very much to say something tender and romantic. But that isn’t possible. The movies screwed us up. We smoked a lot of hash and went to see a double feature at a drive-in. One of the pictures was about a “contemporary love affair” and featured many shots of young lovers strolling down beaches. Now I know that if I speak softly it will seem like I am parroting the movie. But that isn’t the real problem. The real problem is that I am afraid to speak softly. I am afraid of Mal. She knows more than I do. She has control, where I am still steaming, running like a man with a bag over my head, from one thing to the next. We keep walking, bare feet dragging through the sand. But I am not relaxed.
“I love the ocean,” she says. “It’s …”
