Kill Two Birds & Get Stoned

by Kinky Friedman

  "There was nothing we could do," I said. "I had to get you out of there."

  Clyde did not respond. She'd stopped crying but now she seemed to be gazing wistfully out the window at something apparently only she could see. "Windows," Fox had said.

  "Where do you want to go?" I asked. "Down to the police station?"

  Clyde looked at me quizzically. There were no signs of tears in her eyes.

  "No point going to the cop shop now," she said. "Fox has been there before and he knows what to do. He's been taken away in bracelets many times. Been in and out many times. In and out of places. And people."

  "Are you one of them?" I asked. Clyde ignored my question.

  "We have only one decision to make," she said.

  "What's the decision?"

  "Where are we going for lunch?"

  If the truth be told, I was beginning to feel in pretty good spirits and I knew the reason: the prospect of being alone with

  Clyde without having Fox Harris anywhere in the vicinity. There was a twinge of nagging guilt, however. Fox was definitely a person of the moment, and not unlike Teddy or the Masai warriors, any amount of incarceration he incurred would, no doubt, be exceedingly difficult for him. I put these thoughts out of my mind, nonetheless, and decided I'd concentrate on Clyde. If she could deal so stoically with Fox's current predicament, so could I.

  We got out of the cab on Canal Street, right where Little Italy meets Chinatown, if the two disparate cultures could ever be said to truly meet. I don't know how cultures or even people ever meet in this busy world. Everyone seems so into his or her self, and the human soul, of course, will remain eternally unknowable. Singles bars are just not going to get it done. Sometimes, though, you meet a rather odd, charming person in, of all places, a bank, and you find yourself walking down Canal Street with her, holding her hand.

  "Okay," I said. "Now we come to the decision that all New Yorkers must sooner or later come to grips with. Will it be beef chow fun or linguini with clams?"

  "Neither," said Clyde. "I'm a vegetarian."

  "Another thing I never knew about you," I said. "How long has this been going on behind my back?"

  "Always," she said. "At least as long as I can remember. I've never believed in eating anything that has a face or anything that had a mother."

  I looked at her again and it was almost like seeing her for the first time. What a strange and beautiful sentiment, I thought, from such a reckless, fun-loving person.

  "Nothing with a face," I said, "and nothing with a mother. Maybe I'll try that myself sometime."

  "You will when you're ready," she said. "And I think you're almost ready."

  The truth was, I was almost ready to jump her beautiful, sensitive, vegetarian bones right there on the sidewalk. The truth was, I was thinking of becoming a vegetarian myself by having oral sex with a vegetarian named Clyde. I almost said something, but I didn't think it would go down very well, pardon the expression. I was actually quite pleased with that clever little turn of phrase and I took out the small notepad that I'd started to carry around with me. I scribbled some notes to myself rather furiously for a few moments while Clyde wandered off to engage in a conversation with a small Chinese boy carrying a little Italian flag. Maybe the cultures had begun to meet, I thought.

  When Clyde came back, she looked almost somber. I put the notebook away and took both her hands in both of mine. Suddenly I was looking into the eyes of a stranger. Just when you think you're getting to know someone, they turn into somebody else.

  "Don't write the book," she said.

  I was totally floored. Somewhere in the back of my alcoholic memory, a dark thought flashed. I had spent so many years keeping my ideas to myself. Keeping so many pages to myself for so many years. Not speaking my thoughts to others. Not sharing life with others. I couldn't believe she was telling me this.

  "I can't believe you're telling me this," I exclaimed. "You're the reason I'm writing the bloody book. You and Fox. Because of you, I have a story. A tale to tell. Characters. Real flesh-and-blood characters. And finally, after all this time, I have a desire to write. A need to write. My life was so empty and meaningless, I couldn't even have told this to anyone before. For God's sake, you're my fucking muse!"

  "That's sweet, Walter," she said. I was starting not to like it so much when she called me Walter. Like Van Gogh, I wanted Sunshine.

  "It's not sweet," I said. "It's true. I wouldn't be writing the book if it weren't for you. First you encourage my writing and all of a sudden you tell me not to write. Make up your mind, Clyde. Which is it going to be?"

  "Little Italy," she said.

  We had a quiet lunch in Little Italy at a place called Luna's.

  Clyde had some pasta and some minestrone soup. I had linguini with red clam sauce and meatballs, a bad start for my career as a vegetarian. I commented on it and Clyde responded, indirectly, as usual, yet somehow right to the point.

  "If you go ahead and write the book—”

  "I am."

  "—then I don't really mind your writing about the fact that I don't eat anything with a face or a mother. I just don't know about the other thing you're thinking of putting in there."

  "What other thing?"

  "The bit you scribbled down while I was talking to the little boy with the flag. It's funny, I guess, in a crude sort of way, and it might even come true if you play your cards right, but don't you think eating a vegetarian is a little bit trite?"

  Two things were suddenly in play here and, like any true novelist, I completely missed the second and far more important one, the one that wasn't about me. My work hadn't even been written yet and here it was already being criticized. And not just criticized, but being called the mother of all words that authors hate: "trite." Ho-hum, lackluster, predictable, pedestrian, all those we can deal with. But there's no author alive who doesn't bristle when he hears the word "trite." Any author worth his salt would far rather be accused of plagiarism.

  "'Trite'?" I shouted. "Trite? What's trite about—"

  And then the second, and far more obvious factor dawned upon my marinated brain cells. How could Clyde have known what I'd scribbled in my little notebook? She hadn't seen a word of it. Did she know me so well? Was I that much of an open book? Had she truly read my mind?

  Suddenly, I felt a little dizzy and the room seemed a bit warm. What kind of girl was this? I wondered. What kind of person can actually read your mind, tell you what you jotted down to yourself on a little pad thirty minutes ago, and then go on eating her vegetarian minestrone soup as if nothing had happened? And now she was smiling.

  "Don't be alarmed," she said. "It was just an educated guess."

  "Bullshit. You couldn't have seen what I'd written. What is this? A magic act?"

  "I suppose you could say that what you've written didn't go down too well."

  I felt as if somebody had hit me with a hammer, but it didn't feel bad; it just felt strange. I retrieved my little novelist's notebook from the inside pocket of my coat. What was the point of keeping my notes to myself? I thought. I might as well wear them on my body like a sandwich board. For a few stunned moments, I carefully perused the words I had recently written.

  "It says here 'go down very well,'" I said weakly. "Not 'go down too well.'"

  "Nobody's perfect," she said.

  "So just like that you read my mind? I can't believe it. It's got to be some kind of trick. But how in God's name did you learn to do it?"

  "Nobody learns to do it," said Clyde. "It's just like telling fortunes. It's something I've been doing since I was very young. In fact, I was working in a carnival. That's how I first met Fox. Then the carnival left town."

  "Where did this happen?"

  Clyde took a cigarette out of my pack on the table. I lit it for her. She took a puff and seemed to just watch the smoke for a moment.

  "I think," she said, "it was either in Chinatown or Little Italy."

  The waiter came over and we ordered tw
o double espressos, two cannolis, and some of those strawberries you can get in Little Italy that are covered with chocolate. There wasn't much conversation and that was good. I had some serious thinking to do, and since I couldn't know for sure if Clyde knew what I was thinking, I had to be very careful. It was strange, to say the least. But, I must admit, it was not entirely unpleasant. Indeed, there was a rather bizarre sense of excitement about it. It was a new sensation for me. Sharing my innermost thoughts with a friend. Or maybe it wasn't really happening at all. Maybe it was all in my mind.

  Suddenly, Clyde clapped her hands together twice, like the CEO of some grand global corporation indicating that the meeting was adjourned. Whatever stray remnants of thoughts I'd had in my mind, I noticed, had also taken their little briefcases and left the conference room.

  "Okay, team," she said. "Here's what we're going to do. You're going down to the courthouse and help facilitate Fox's timely release from the calaboose. I really don't want him to stay in there too long this time. It's starting to have a deleterious effect upon his personality. I'd say bailing him out would be the easiest."

  "What if I can't afford his bail?"

  "Spring him. Like we did Teddy. I trust your judgment, Walter. You have a really well-grounded sense of judgment. You'll know what to do."

  "And will you help me?"

  "That's impossible. For one thing, I have a rather severe allergy to cops. For another, I've got to get to work wreaking revenge upon the person who got Teddy locked up in the nuthouse."

  "And whom would that person be?" I asked somewhat cautiously.

  "Donald Trump," she said.

  There are many weird and arcane strains of logic in this vast and troubled land. But from none of these that made any sense, or so it seemed to me, did Clyde's comments appear to come. Possibly, I thought, I was just too rational, too pragmatic, too Walter, to see the light of her peculiar truth.

  "Now what in the world," I asked, not unreasonably, "has Donald Trump got to do with this?"

  "Trump owns Trump Towers. It was his property and his people who had Teddy arrested and put away in the nuthouse. I'm going to teach Trump that he'd better learn to forgive those who trespass against him. Besides, I never much liked people who always put their names all over buildings. And I don't like the buildings. And there's just a bunch of Gucci crap that nobody can really afford and nobody really needs inside those buildings and it makes everybody who visits here believe that all this capitalistic detritus is what America's all about and they're the only ones who buy it anyway because they want to be how they think we are and it's all Donald Trump's fault."

  "Can't argue with that," I said. I wasn't exactly sure what she'd said but it had sounded pretty convincing.

  "Don't look so worried, Sunshine," she said brightly. "I'll take care of Trump and you look after Fox. It's as simple as that. The courthouse is only a few blocks from here, you know."

  "But I've never bailed anybody out before."

  "Good. It'll be on-the-job training. By the way, I thought you were wonderful today. The diversion worked perfectly. Then you got Teddy on his way safely. Then you even came back and got me. And I'm glad that you did. I'm very, very proud of you, Sunshine. If I still believed in heroes, I swear, you'd be mine."

  "I'm nobody's hero," I said. "I'm just trying to figure out what I'm doing and why I'm doing what I'm doing. I mean, these little hobbies of yours and Fox's seem to be becoming increasingly dangerous. The risk involved this morning, as we've already seen, proved to be extremely dangerous."

  "Dangerous, yes," said Clyde, taking my hand in hers across the table. "But the most dangerous thing in the world is to run the risk of waking up one morning and realizing suddenly that all this time you've been living without really and truly living and by then it's too late. When you wake up to that kind of realization, it's too late for wishes and regrets. It's even too late to dream."

  In her eyes, I could easily see her concern for me. It was almost as if she thought that I, not Fox, was the one who was languishing in prison, and maybe I was. She gave my hand a quick squeeze. It worked again. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw her smiling at me in a sad-happy way, like a circus clown smiling at a crippled kid. There was such kindness in that smile. If everybody would have stopped what they were doing for a moment to notice, it probably could have warmed the whole city of New York.

  The waiter came and I paid the check and we walked out of the restaurant and drifted down Mulberry Street like two shadows in the cold golden sunlight. I had my arm around Clyde now and I had no illusions that I could control whatever was going to happen. We walked together for a while and looked in windows but I never knew if I was seeing what she was.

  I kissed her hair in front of the Church of the Most Precious Blood. Then I kissed her precious hands. My "well-grounded sense of judgment" was telling me that something was wrong with this picture but I ignored it with little conscious effort. It was like a still, small voice speaking to me across my alcoholic dark ages with a message something to the effect of this: that this woman was a ticket for the train to hell. I now realize that no other person can truly be considered a ticket to hell. You choose the path to hell right from the restaurant menu. Then you select the person you wish to travel that path with you.

  We walked hand in hand down a block or two, past several funeral homes, onto a small street that ran alongside a park. On one side, young black boys were playing basketball. On the other side, old Italian men were playing boccie ball. I recall vividly the image of Clyde standing in that little park feeding the pretzel I'd bought her to the birds and the squirrels.

  "Be careful with us," she'd said. "Fox and I are different from other people. We're like two little birds that you hold in your hand. If you hold us too tightly, you'll destroy us without even knowing it."

  I held her close to me then and the birds swirled around us like leaves that were singing. And, I could never be sure, but I thought my heart seemed to be singing, too. The still, small voice was silent now. All the roads I'd traveled in my life, I thought, had led me to this little park and this Gypsy woman who was, I noticed, crying on the shoulder of the highway. And the shoulder of the highway, for the moment at least, was my shoulder.

  "Don't cry," I said, kissing her face and tasting her tears. "I'll take care of Fox."

  "I'm not crying for Fox, Sunshine," she said. "I'm crying for you."

  I left her there in the park and headed down the narrow path to the courthouse. When I turned around to look back, she was gone.

  eleven

  Fox's court-appointed defense attorney looked like Woody Allen. This fact, however, did not apparently surprise Fox. As he confided in me later: "All court-appointed defense attorneys look like Woody Allen." Far from holding it against the man, I was just happy to have finally located him. It's troubling enough just trying to bail somebody out of jail without having to witness all the human tragedies occurring in every nook and cranny of 100 Centre Street. I saw a Puerto Rican family huddled together crying. I saw a black family talking to a lawyer. I heard the lawyer tell them: "The best I can get him is five years." Then the black family huddled together and they started crying. Then I saw a small group of Orthodox Jews talking to a lawyer in the corner. The charges, just from what I could tell, had to do with some kind of insurance fraud. The Orthodox Jews were not crying. Maybe they had a better lawyer, I thought.

  "Our guy," as the Woody Allen impersonator repeatedly called Fox, was in for criminal trespass, aiding an escape, and resisting arrest. "It could have been worse," said the defense attorney. I looked around me at the scenes of bedlam and despair up and down the long, impassive corridors. I decided the defense attorney may have been right.

  "Here's the situation," said the attorney. "The case is before the New York Supreme Court.

  That's not as bad as it sounds because New York is the only place where the Supreme Court is the lowest court for criminal charges. That really doesn't help things mu
ch. It's just a piece of trivia to file away so you'll know exactly where to go if your friend gets himself into trouble again."

  "Okay," I said. "But what do we do this time?"

  "Well, our guy's already had the first arraignment. The judge has asked for a seventy-two-hour psychiatric evaluation."

  "He has?"

  "She has. Yes. It's not unusual, though. Nothing to be worried about. He'll pass the psychiatric evaluation. Everybody does. You'd have to be Son of Sam having a bad day for New York City to care."

  "That's comforting, I guess."

  "Yes. Well, there's nothing at all you can do for the next seventy-two hours. I'll call you when it's time to step up to the plate for the second arraignment. The judge will no doubt find no immediate reasons to deny bail. I don't think the bail will be very much. You'll just sign some papers and go home and wait for him and in a little while our guy will be out."

  "So I just go home now?"

  "That's right. Give me your phone number and I'll call you when we need you."

  I gave the defense attorney my phone number and walked down the long corridor past all the troubled and distraught people and went out into the sunlight. It seemed very much like coming out of a sad tunnel of some kind. It was like entering a different land where people laughed and black kids played basketball and old Italian men played boccie ball and if you wanted to go somewhere you could take a cab or a subway or just walk around and look at windows or just look at the sky. Windows reminded me of Clyde and so, for some reason, did taxicabs and the sky and just about everything else. I felt a little guilty that I was so focused on Clyde and not thinking much at all about Fox. But that, I reasoned, was one of the things that happens to you when you're in jail. You find out who your friends really are and, most of the time, the news isn't good.