Joe's Liver

by Di Filippo, Paul

  “Still …”

  “Hey, listen, man, let’s get out and hit the clubs, I need to hear some live music.”

  “Wait one moment, Roy, I don’t know if I can. Roseanna, your mother —”

  “Ardy, don’t be a wimp. Either you’re a free man — in which case you’ll go with your friend when he asks you — or you’re a paid lackey — in which case I order you to accompany me.”

  “It seems like Hobson’s choice.”

  “Fuck Hobson! Let’s go. Just give me a second to get my jacket.”

  Roy leaves the room. A second later, he calls out angrily, “Hey, there’s fucking dried blood or somethin’ all over my favorite jacket. Ardy, do you know anything about this ?”

  “Roy, I am unaware of a satisfactory explanation.”

  “Oh, well, I’ll just wear this one instead …”

  Rejoining Ardy, Roy tosses down a folded newspaper. “Here, I can’t even focus my eyes. Find out who’s playing where.”

  Unfolding the pages of the Boston Phoenix, Ardy scans the listings.

  “At an establishment known as ‘Axis’ — possibly a venue catering to veterans of the European Theater — we find a group calling itself ‘Glue Sluts.’”

  Collapsed across the bed, Roy says, “No, they’re a buncha fuckin’ poseurs. What else?”

  “At ‘Common Ground,’ ‘Ivana Trump’s Underwear’ shares a bill with ‘Chocolate Dishrag.’”

  “Saw them over the summer. They stunk. Go on.”

  “‘Lovely Frights’ at ‘Harper’s Ferry?’”

  “Nope.”

  “‘Civics 101’ at the ‘Cantab Lounge?’”

  “Nope.”

  “‘Cancer Cows’ at the ‘Middle East?’”

  “Nope.”

  “‘Bush Babies’ at the ‘Kendall Café?’”

  “Nope.”

  “‘Horses of Distortion’ at ‘T. T. the Bear’s?’”

  “Nope.”

  “‘Nutmeg Nuggets’ at ‘Johnny D’s?’”

  “Nope.”

  “‘Bibsy Watson and the San Jose Jazz Trio’ at the ‘Oak Bar?’”

  Roy propels himself off the bed and snatches the paper from Ardy’s hands. “‘Bibsy Fuckin’ Watson,’ my ass, are you crazy, man? Look, I can’t make up my mind. Let’s just go to the Paradise, they always have something decent.”

  Ardy helps Roy to ambulate unsteadily out to the Jag parked on the icy cobbles. Roy opens the passenger door and falls into the seat.

  “I’m too fucked-up to drive, Ardy, you’ll have to.”

  “Roy, I must protest. My own faculties are rather disengaged at the moment.”

  “Ardy, anyone who could say what you just said is not too blown-away to drive.”

  “All right, Roy, but I just hope no officer of the law finds cause to stop us, for I have yet to go through the formal process of obtaining my license.”

  For some reason this bit of news — which Ardy hoped would sober Roy up — sets him to laughing uncontrollably. Tears course down his cheeks, and he becomes short of breath. When at last he stops, he says, “I can’t believe it, I just can’t. My mother was so horny she didn’t even ask if you could drive. Unbelievable! If she only knew …”

  “Roy, you mustn’t tell her.”

  “Oh, no, I won’t, it’s a lot funnier this way.”

  Reluctantly Ardy backs the Jag out. Under Roy’s guidance he maneuvers through the night, heading toward the Grail of Roy’s desired live entertainment.

  Neither Ardy nor Roy is operating at peak efficiency, and they follow a most circuitous route through the city. Eventually, around eleven, they find the club. Ardy notices that the lights outside the building appear to be oscillating violently, and the plangent jabber of the crowd sounds like the roar of the breakers striking the lonesome untouristed beaches of Spice Island.

  Somehow he and Roy end up inside, at a table, each holding a drink, atop which float brown specks.

  “What the fuck is this in my Long Island Iced Tea?” Sips. “Nutmeg! For Christ’s sake, what the hell kind of bartender they got here?”

  “It tastes okay to me, Roy.”

  “Yeah, well, I suppose we’re here for the music. Let’s listen.”

  Onstage a six-piece band is playing some sort of tropical music, a mixture of salsa, meringue, reggae and rock. Roy settles back and seems to be enjoying himself. Ardy, however, is too intrigued by the lead singer to really pay attention. The lights are dim, Ardy’s senses are fuzzed, and the stage is distant, yet Ardy believes he knows this man up there. Could it possibly be …?

  “Roy, what is the name of this group?”

  “One sec, I’ll ask.”

  Roy leans over to the next table and makes inquiries. “She says that’s ‘Mister E and the Illegal Aliens.’ Hot new group.”

  “Roy, I know that gentleman singing, and I have to see him.”

  “Good luck, man, you’ll never make it backstage.”

  “Nevertheless, I must try.”

  At last the band finishes its set. A crowd rushes the stage, Ardy among them. Pushing and shoving in an unfortunately ill-mannered way, Ardy manages to get to the front. To the backs of the departing band-members he yells out, “Mister Enrico, its me, Ardy!”

  Mister Enrico turns and smiles into the lights in a somewhat bewildered fashion.

  “My money, Mister Enrico, where’s my money?”

  Taped music is playing now and the noise is tremendous. When Mister Enrico replies, all Ardy can make out is “… gone, man.”

  “Mister Enrico, I must talk with you!”

  “…’nother gig, man — York —”

  Mister Enrico is swept away by his tired buddies, and Ardy is left grasping at the empty stage. A high-heeled woman treads on his foot. He gives up.

  “Roy, I was unable to speak with my friend.”

  “Too bad. Say, listen, Felicia here needs a ride home. You don’t mind catching the T back, do you?”

  “I believe at this hour it has ceased operations, Roy.…”

  “Hey, don’t lay a fucking guilt trip on me, man.”

  “I could use the fresh air a walk would entail, Roy.”

  “Great, man, great. We’ll pick up our talk tomorrow.”

  But tomorrow finds Roy in no mood to proselytize or empathize. Not that Ardy is inclined to seek him out. But when he encounters Roy in the hallway — Ardy is tiptoeing to Roseanna’s room; Roy is stumbling out of the john — Roy merely vents an ursine grunt, which Ardy chooses to interpret as remorse for pharmaceutical overindulgence and also as sympathy for Ardy’s arduous walk home through empty, frozen streets. The young bear returns thence to his den.

  Around noon of that same day, Ardy hears a minor altercation in the front hall.

  “Where are you going, Roy, dear?”

  “Out to find the people in this town whose heads aren’t all fucked up.”

  “Must you talk that way, Roy? You know your father always —”

  “Fuck that greedy old capitalist! He’s where all his kind belong now.”

  “Oh, Roy, your own father — !”

  The sound of a door slamming.

  Ardy carefully remains neutral in this matri-filial spat. After all, he does not even know Roger Mountjoy, cannot say if prison does indeed suit his stage of ethical development, and is perhaps in a rather precarious moral position himself to say anything at all.

  For the next two days Roy behaves in an exceedingly mysterious fashion. He cloaks his comings and goings in a shroud of mystery. He peers over his right shoulder habitually, as if looking for kick me signs taped to his back. He moderates his traditional angry stalk to a kind of tender-footed stealth. He speaks sotto voce on the phone, and hangs up hurriedly whenever Ardy or Roseanna happens by.

  Ardy meanwhile is busy with the festivities connected with the coming holiday. Roseanna naturally requires much ferrying about in this season of conspicuous consumption. Her philosophy of gift-buying seems to require that she
alternate purchases for others with ones for herself. The daily activity in the block of Boylston outside Lord & Taylor becomes as familiar to Ardy as the routines of the Sisters of Eternal Recurrence.

  Dipping into his own meager savings, Ardy has purchased a present or two himself. For Roseanna a cookbook; for Roy a baseball glove; for Mister Balboni a bottle of fine Massachusetts wine. Such wild abandoned spending leaves him dizzy. Tears come to his eyes as he contemplates this, his first Christmas in America. Only a slight tinge of sorrow troubles him, when he muses that if things had only worked out with more precision, he might be spending this holiday with the cheerful Staff of the Digest at Pleasantville, where no doubt the Yule log is already blazing, and the wassail glasses are hoisted high.

  At last it is the day before Christmas. Ardy has felt time slow to a crawl recently, and he thought this day would never arrive. At nine in the morning Ardy is in his room, polishing his shoes and singing in a small voice “Silent Night.” Around the hundredth “All is calm,” there sounds a knock on his door.

  “Welcome to Santa’s workshop, whoever you may be.”

  “Cut the Christmas shit, Ardy. I’m here to rag your ass.”

  “Why, Roy, I don’t understand.…”

  Roy has shut the door and now leans against it, arms folded across his chest, right ankle crossed over left, with the tip of his right sneaker supporting that foot. A palpable anger is discernible on his visage, even partially obscured by shades as it is.

  “Why did you keep me in the dark, buddy? Didn’t you think I was serious about my dedication to change? Was that it? Or did you want to hog all the glory yourself, be the hero of the revolution? Man, I just can’t figure it.”

  “Roy, I don’t know what you’re talking about.…”

  “You don’t, huh? Okay, how’s this grab you then? Humpty-fall.”

  “Humpty-fall?”

  “Humpty-fall.”

  “Roy, I fail to see what a nursery rhyme has to do with my alleged irresponsible behavior.…”

  “Nursery rhyme! That’s a good one! Well, you may not be so far off base with that one. Old Uncle Humpty’s gonna take a fall, all right. If you still want to play dumb, let me spell it out for you. U-M-D-P-A-F-L-L.”

  “Oh, no. Roy, you don’t mean to tell me —”

  “That’s just what I’m telling you, Ardy! I’m on the inside of the whole deal now. I’ve met your boss, Doctor Hubert, and the other members of the conspiracy. I know your whole history now. My God, to think how slick you were to con my mother and trick her into providing a safe house for you right after you had almost toppled the whole State of Vermont! I was following the whole scene, you know, back at Bennington, but by the time I made up my mind to get in on it the fascist National Guard had put the whole thing down. But I’m not too late for the action here. It’s going down today, as you fucking well know, you devious bastard!”

  “Roy, I know nothing.…”

  “Come on, Ardy, give up the subterfuge. Your fucking picture’s hanging up in every Post Office in town, for Christ’s sake. Ardy, the revolution needs both you and me! There’s room for white and black in Doctor Hubert’s plans. Don’t try to go it alone. We need solidarity now.”

  “I cannot take part in any of these mad plans of Doctor Spencer’s.…”

  “Spencer? Who’s he?”

  “Hubert, then. Roy, I have no interest in undermining this country. I love it!”

  “I do, too, Ardy. That’s why I’m working to improve it.”

  “You must count me out, Roy.”

  “Like shit! Ardy, Doctor Hubert warned me you might try to back out and play a lone hand, and I’m here to tell you we can’t have it. The plan requires the services of all of us. I’m prepared to turn you in anonymously to the law if you won’t cooperate.”

  “I don’t care, Roy. I’ll go to jail rather than assist Humpty-fall.”

  “Principles, huh? Okay, let’s try this. What if I tell my mother that poor little Poo-Chee is not dead, and has spent days of anguish separated from her ?”

  “What exactly does Doctor Spencer have in mind ?”

  “That’s more like it. You just sit tight until I get back to you. Oh, and get your uniform on.”

  After Roy leaves Ardy gets up and begins pacing. What to do, what to do, whatever to do? Should he flee now? Where would he go? How would he manage? His savings, after approximately a month of wages, consist of thirty dollars and fifteen cents. (Since Roy’s arrival, tens and twenties have mysteriously vanished from the Tupperware vault.) What would he tell Roseanna? No, better to stay and try to tough things out, in the style of former President Richard M. Nixon, who enjoyed for so many years the patronage of the Digest.

  The phone rings. Ardy, as per his duties, hurries to answer it lest it disturb Roseanna.

  “Mountjoy residence.”

  An unfamiliar male voice. “Let me speak to Rosie.”

  “May I ask who’s calling?”

  “It’s her husband, Roger, goddamn it —”

  Ardy crashes the phone down into its cradle. Then he disconnects the receiver and buries it beneath the trash in a basket, so that the line will be permanently busy.

  “Ardy, who was that on the phone?”

  “Just the Salvation Army soliciting a charitable donation, Roseanna. I told them we had no old mattresses or tattered clothing at all.”

  “Fine.”

  In an hour or three Roy returns, bearing a gift-wrapped ticking package.

  “Roy, what is that infernal device for?”

  “Christmas present for Uncle Humpty. Come on, time for you to play chauffeur. Just remember, we’re working for a time when men of your race won’t ever have to drive rich white women around again.”

  “But Roy, I enjoy taking your mother places.…”

  “I bet. Let’s move it.”

  Roy, sitting in the back seat, directs Ardy to Massachusetts Avenue. They turn right, toward the Charles River, and are soon crossing the Harvard Bridge. The day is bright and crisp, a light coat of snow scintillant on grass and roofs. The sky is so blue that it brings a tear to Ardy’s eye as he imagines how he could be enjoying himself, were it not for the mysterious toils of Fate.

  “Where are we heading, Roy?”

  “You’ll see soon enough. Just keep driving.”

  Soon they are abreast of a rusty, ramshackle chain-link fence enclosing a parking lot and a huge white Structure that resembles a squat Liquid Natural Gas tank. A sign on the fence reads:

  MIT PROPERTY

  NO TRESPASSING

  “Roy, please tell me that this is not our destination.”

  “It certainly is.”

  “And that curious windowless building, Roy …”

  “Is the pint-sized but highly radioactive MIT nuclear reactor.”

  “Oh, no! I can’t believe it. Why isn’t it under stringent armed guard ?”

  “A fat and decadent society gets careless, Ardy, you ought to know that.”

  “Roy, let me turn back now. We’re both still young. There will be plenty of time for political agitation when we reach Doctor Spencer’s age. Which we might not do if we continue on this mad escapade.”

  “Too late, Ardy. There’s the rest of the team.”

  Approaching the gate to the lot from the other direction is an old van whose side is Stenciled thusly:

  UMDPAFLL HOLIDAY

  FREE COFFEE WAGON

  The van pulls into the open gate and stops by the sentinel booth, which holds a lone bored man in a security-guard outfit. Ardy pulls the Jag up behind the “coffee wagon.”

  From the van emerges Santa Claus in full regalia.

  “Ho, ho, ho! How about a free cup of java, son? Plenty of nice, rich cream, too!”

  The guard perks up and Steps from the shack. “Sure, sounds good.”

  Santa swiftly pulls a pistol from his suit and clubs the guard to the ground with the butt end. The violent old gent then calmly strolls to the driver’s side of the
Jag.

  “Glad to have you back with us, son. We’ll hold the gate while you and Roy plant the bomb.”

  “Doctor Spencer, I must protest.…”

  “Later, son. We’ve got other targets to attend to, and can’t afford to waste any time,”

  The van parks clear of the gate and disgorges an armed squad of anti-leash-law terrorists. With trembling limbs Ardy drives through and up to the reactor.

  “Roy, this is insane.…”

  Despite his earlier bravado, Roy appears nervous now. “Shut up and keep the motor running.”

  While Roy is choosing the most likely place to rest the ticking box, a bullhorn-amplified voice roars out.

  “HOLD IT RIGHT THERE, YOU AGITATORS! THIS IS AGENT JOHNSON OF THE U.S. IMMIGRATION SERVICE, AND MY PARTNER, AGENT JOHNSON. TAKE THE MICROPHONE, JOHNSON.”

  “NO RELATION.”

  “WE ARE ACCOMPANIED BY THE CAMBRIDGE SWAT TEAM, AND ARE PREPARED TO UTILIZE DEADLY FORCE IF YOU DO NOT AT ONCE LAY DOWN YOUR ARMS.…”

  In reply to this ultimatum a chorus of automatic rifle fire stutters out from the UMDPAFLL gang. The swat team replies in kind. Bullet holes materialize in the Jag’s tinted glass.

  “Holy fucking Christ! Ardy, take off!”

  “Into the fuh-fuh-fusillade, Roy?”

  “It’s the only way out!”

  Ardy slumps down below the dash and floors it, steering by radar. The windshield is riddled with hits and sprays inward. Ardy prays to the Sisters and barrels on, through the crossfire and out onto Massachusetts Avenue, where he hooks an instinctive right, back toward the city, away from this hostile Cantabridgian reception. As a final insult, their rear window is shot out.

  “Any instructions, Master Mountjoy?”

  “Shut the fuck up, I gotta think.”

  As they recross Harvard Bridge an enormous explosion resounds behind them. This seems to trigger something in Roy.

  “Okay, we gotta stop back home first and clean out any cash that’s around. Then we’ll head for a place I know, someone who’ll put us up.”

  Silently obedient, Ardy guides the limping, bullet- riddled vehicle back to Beacon Hill and the Mountjoy manse.

  “Okay—Ardy, get inside and round up any money you can find. Grab some clothes for us, too. I’ll watch for cops.”