Fickle

by Peter Manus

  Sewer Hag: Mördare! Mördare!

  She kind of croaks the word—my English translation online dictionary ID’ed it as Swedish for “murderer,” but who knows. To my even greater amazement, she goes to spit at me, but Mysterious Hottie pushes me and her spit sprays him instead. He ignores her and continues to push me, his hand against my back, until we’re hurrying up the stairs together. By now Sewer Hag is shouting that same word after us—the stairs go on forever—it’s like we’ve fallen into some Ingmar Bergman art flick.

  Me: I’m going to fall and fuck up my stockings if you keep pushing me.

  M.H.: Granny hit me with a loogey. I need a rabies shot, fast.

  Me: (glancing down at where a bubbly mucoid glob drips down the fly of his pants) Oh, God.

  I hurry. By the time we hit a coffee shop, I’m fighting the need to giggle madly. M.H. drops me in a chair by the door and peels off for the restroom to de-expectorate. I could walk out right now, of course, but instead I climb to my feet and line up for a very, very large chai spice. I can still feel the pressure of his fingers against my back as I order one for him, too.

  M.H.: (settling across from me. He seems unsurprised that I’ve waited—the guy is confident, I’ll give him that. Not cocky, though. More like, very eye-to-eye in his behavior toward me. Is it a unique appreciation for women as equal, or a mating tactic?) So what’s it been like? Nightmares or sleeplessness? Scouring the papers for news, or have you actually called the cop in charge to try and get info about who the guy was and why he did it?

  Me: (shaking my head as I eye him steadily). Sorry, but first we cover how it is you know who I am and how you manage to be where I’m going before I get there. Start with the diner on 128. I normally wouldn’t even have stopped there. And don’t go near the word “fate.” Just don’t.

  M.H.: (taking a swallow of tea, then meeting my eye. The look in his says he doesn’t have much hope of beating my skepticism.) All I can tell you is that I saw you on the platform that night the guy did himself and then the next night I saw you in the diner up on 128. Just happened to glance up and there you were, reflected in that mirrored wall behind the counter. You do this thing with your neck (he makes a motion with his hand) when you’re reacting to something—I saw it through the train window that night, and you did it again when you entered the diner. Caught my eye. I watched you. You had coffee, tried to get through it neatly but your hands were not steady. You were impacted by the suicide. I hadn’t been able to brush it off, either. But it wasn’t until I was back in the city that I got that I wanted to see you again. Man, what is this shit? (This last is aimed at his cup.)

  Me: It’s called tea. You let it steep. And I’m not sure I believe in coincidence any more than I believe in fate.

  M.H.: Hold the thought, will you? (He goes up and gets himself a coffee. Real men don’t drink spiced tea, I suppose. I watch his back as he pays. Even in droopy pants, his lean loins make their presence felt. He comes back and drops a shortbread bar in front of me, half wrapped in tissue. He’s got one for himself, too, between his teeth.)

  Me: Thanks, but I don’t eat processed sugar.

  M.H.: (nodding agreeably, he picks up my shortbread and shoves it into his mouth next to his own, then flushes it all down with black coffee. Somehow it doesn’t come across as piggish, but more like he’s the type who doesn’t bother eating until the opportunity presents itself, at which point he stokes up so as not to have to be bothered again for a long while. He cleans his teeth with his tongue and ducks his head to one side so as to belch discreetly behind a fist before he resumes talking. I have to say, I’m a bit charmed by his consideration, compared to the way most men eat.) So, anyway, the next night I was finishing up this job I’d been doing in Concord. It was raining like a motherfucker and I went back to the diner, not really expecting that you would be there, but, you know, it just seemed like a weird night and I wasn’t so surprised to find that you were. Problem was, you were way into your laptop and didn’t look like you were in the mood to be approached. So I laid back. I didn’t even catch that you spotted me—if I had, I would have tried to sit down with you. Anyway, I haven’t been back up that way since.

  Me: (still skeptical) And yesterday?

  M.H.: Oh. (He almost smiles, then sees my face and plays it totally straight.) That’s less of a coincidence. I saw you in the jewelry shop. Pearle’s place. I think I must have come up the elevator right behind you. Guess we were after the same thing. I didn’t go in because you and that gay guy looked like you were getting kind of intense. Just didn’t seem like the right time.

  Me: If you were there, why didn’t I see you?

  M.H.: You didn’t look behind you. I was out in the hallway. Saw you through the shop windows and grabbed the elevator down before it closed.

  Me: You’re telling me that in the space of a few seconds, looking through a thick tinted-glass window, you could tell the clerk was gay?

  M.H.: (shrugs as if to say “come on”)

  Me: (okay, he has a point.) Where did you learn that the dead guy was Stephen Pearle?

  M.H.: Where did you?

  Me: I’m not the stalker. I don’t have to explain myself.

  M.H.: I got Pearle’s name from the cops, which is what I imagine you did.

  Me: (skipping his last comment, although it’s not lost on me that I’m not so sure that Burly-Bear or Escroto would actually have given me Pearle’s name if I’d asked for it, those bacon-biters) And after, at the Tremont Street Starbucks? Just drawing me from memory, were you?

  M.H.: (pausing to swallow coffee) Well, it’s what I do.

  Me: What do you do?

  M.H.: Draw people from memory. Although it’s usually from other people’s memories.

  Me: I don’t know what you’re talking about. Are you some sort of art therapist?

  M.H.: I’m a police sketch artist. I draw bad guys after they stick up the local Store 24. Drive-by shooters. Whatever. People describe faces to me and I draw them. Sometimes they look like the assholes they’re trying to look like. Sometimes not too much. Depends on how I click with the witness.

  Me: (feeling myself color in spite of all efforts to resist) So you’re a cop. Well, I have to say, that was my first guess. (I start to rise from my chair.)

  M.H.: (laying a hand on mine to stop me, then lifting it quickly when he sees my facial reaction) Not a cop. Not on the force. I do the sketching freelance.

  Me: (feeling myself relax a nick, but unable to resist stinging him) Cash while you wait for recognition as a real artist?

  M.H.: Screw that. Working as a police sketch artist is not something anyone would do for reliable cash in this day and age. They’ve got computers now, pull together a bullshit composite of a robot, but in most cases that’s all you get. You know how little the real artists are used?

  Me: (not ready to trust him) Then why do you do it? Just in case you need a suicide witness’s name and number?

  M.H.: (He flashes a half smile, so I know that at least the idea of hitching up with me has at least crossed his mind.) I do it as a community service. Sometimes it works better for a witness or victim to work with a real artist than with some cop in front of a computer. Parent who sees a kid take a slug. Rape victim. They get something out of focusing on the sketch pad and my hands, drawing. Don’t ask me what—I’m just the man with the pencil.

  Me: How PC of you.

  M.H.: Yes, but that’s not my reason for doing it. (He pauses, then shrugs.) My brother was a cop. Got shot in the neck and killed when he pulled over some freak for speeding on 495. He’d gotten me into police sketch work when I really needed the cash, couple years back. So I keep myself available in his memory. Keeps me in touch with some of his friends in the department.

  Me: (relenting a little but not resuming my seat) I’m sorry about your brother. And I get how you might have seen Mr. Sui—Pearle’s death and how you might get a little obsessed with it and how that might include getting a little obsessed with me. But t
hat ends now. I’m not some morbid fantasy. I don’t want to see you and I don’t want to “run into” you. If you keep this up, I’m going straight to the very cops who gave you information about me that they should never have given out. I’m going to tell them that you’ve been stalking me and that I’ve got a real bastard of a lawyer and…and do you get that?

  M.H.: (mildly) For sure.

  Me: Good. (I go to turn and leave, picking up my tea.)

  M.H.: One thing, though.

  Me: (of course the cool thing would have been to walk out, but I’m feeling pretty slick after having fumbling that speech out, particularly the tricky part about “morbid fantasy.” So I turn to give him one last, shriveling look.)

  M.H.: What if I’ve gotten further than you in figuring out who this Stephen Pearle was and why he committed suicide in front of you? Don’t you want to know about it?

  Me: (faltering in a major way, as all my pent-up fears and obsession and, yes, even curiosity tumble to the forefront of my mind. I mean, here is someone who could give me all the inside crap about the BPD and Burly-Bear that I want, and also share my desire to get to the bottom of the whole muddled load of crap I’d been wallowing in for days now. I mean, banding together with the Mysterious Hottie could actually clear everything up.) What do you call yourself? (I ask it without thinking, my voice thin and unfamiliar.)

  M.H.: Ferguson.

  Me: Does that come with a first name?

  M.H.: Guy. (He reaches to shake, which I ignore.)

  Me: Guy Ferguson. (then, childishly) You didn’t borrow that off your favorite soap?

  M.H.: (smiling) My mother was French, so growing up it was “Gee.” Anyway, everyone just calls me Ferguson.

  Me: Thank you. It’s good to have a name, for if I need to file a complaint.

  I leave, feeling a flicker of triumph at having been both sensible and morally right. By the time I get to my office, I’m not so sure. The fact is, as I blog this right now, I’m taking solace in the fact that, if I do decide I want to know what the Mysterious Hottie knows, I can pick it right up where we left off at the Starbucks.

  Sigh. So what do I do?

  GIVE IT TO ME STRAIGHT

  wazzup! @ February 1 04:38 pm

  Brilliant scene as always! Got the quote in minutes: Rendezvous in Black! Kiddo, you are just sooooooooooooooo CW!!!

  36-D @ February 1 04:42 pm

  Okay, so this guy Guy—huh, he’s right, we should just call him Ferguson—anyway, he is nowhere on the web. I have googled up and down for the past half hour. Plus it’s true that some cop with the name Bill Ferguson was killed on 495 two years ago, and I got some stuff about him but nothing on a brother. But I did find out that Bill (Guillaume was his real name) was originally from Toronto. That means that Guy is probably Canadian as well.

  marleybones @ February 1 04:44 pm

  Having enough success as an artist to make ends meet does not bring you above the obscurity level. Think of all the actors who make a perfectly good living whom you’d swear never existed until they score an Oscar nomination at age sixty. Writers, too. And all these folks are TRYING to get noticed. Guy Ferguson could be doing hundred-and-fifty-foot murals for Madison Ave lobbies and keep himself fairly obscure, name-wise. Besides, if he’s from Canada chances are he’s still not a U.S. citizen, so that makes his identity even more difficult to just pick up.

  proudblacktrannie @ February 1 04:46 pm

  Oh my word, maybe he wants a green card. Could you just give him my number, I mean, since you’re clearly rejecting him.

  fickel @ February 1 05:52 pm

  Am I?

  21

  February 1 @ 7:44 pm

  >BURLY-BEAR CAN SHOVE IT<

  (and I hope the bastard is lurking so he READS THIS)

  Okay if you thought I was self-destructive before, wait five. At around 6:30 this evening I leave work—if I may call my rendezvous with the Mysterious Hottie followed by several hours of blogging “work”—and who should be waiting outside in his M-tang but the Burlster. He’s all businesslike about how it’s his duty to check up on witnesses in a sudden death scenario but really he just wants to drive me home to make up for the little tiff that we didn’t quite have over the guy shacking up in my place.

  So I’m actually happy to see him, and even more chuffed when I realize that I’m wearing my E. Bompard cashmere V-neck that Noah has nicknamed my “tittie-nips” sweater for reasons rather evident to the beholder. So we have a decent ride up Mem Drive, and I’m just getting around to considering whether I’m going to open up about Mysterious Hottie and maybe even let him talk me into a little “cop on top” when he blows it. And I do mean utterly and in one fell swoop. My thick-necked Lothario gets all smirky and side-glancy and then he lets me know that he’s taken care of my “roommate” problem.

  I, in turn, go all blinky and reedy-voiced and “umm, not quite getting you?” He, sensing that this conversation is going sour before it even gets up and running, retreats into that torpid cop formality he’s so good at and tells me that breaking parole can be a serious infraction and that some guys just don’t learn when you give them a break, but he figured it was worth a little unofficial direct leaning to get my “houseguest” back where he ought to be. So I let a little silence go by and then ask what exactly “direct leaning” consists of, and he gives me some hogwash about delivering messages in the only language some guys can hear. Ah, cops. What would we do with our elementary school bullies without this professional avenue through which they may allow their natural tendencies to flourish “productively?”

  At around this juncture I get a little more shrill than is probably warranted (in retrospect even I see this), and accuse him of using intimidation tactics to get my brother out of my life when he’s the only true support system I have, the only real man I can trust. And then I hop along to the topic of what business it is of his to be checking up on my family just to try and figure out who the guy is who seems to be sleeping in my apartment.

  Thusly, sad to note, I stab my sharp little tongue a tad too close to the testes of the matter. We all know that guys don’t like it when they’re revealed as, I don’t know, hoping for anything out of a particular woman—that’d be just soo homo. (breathe, breathe, collect self, collect self—evidently I’m still a touch verklempt over the whole thing)

  So, anyway, Burly points out that at least he guessed right when he figured there must be a family connection rather than figuring a tat-hound like dickel would be someone I’d be shacking up with voluntarily.

  At that, I get rather sputtery at the idea that I associate with my brother on any basis other than a voluntary one.

  This in turn prompts Burly-Bear to present a hammy fist out of which protrudes his fingers, seriatim, as he proceeds to pronounce some of my brother’s litany of so-called “crimes,” such as grand sleaziness auto, possession of a controlled body odor, operation of his sneakers under the influence, loitering with intent to scratch his balls, etc.

  To be fair, the list might or might not be impressive, but all I know is I’ll be damned if I’m going to hear it. As I’ve said, I have an understanding with my dizygotic other that I will not seek to know of his various activities that might tempt others who do not know him or love him to rush to condemn—so I proceed to block out Burly-Bear’s big, bossy voice by slapping about heedlessly to drown out his preachy ass. This includes smacking the dashboard, glove compartment, seats, door, myself, and, when none of that works to shut him down, I find that screaming and aiming my blows at him works more effectively.

  So he shuts up. We finish the ride rather quietly, actually.

  By the time he drops me off I’m crying silently, my furious face aimed down at myself, my left hand supporting my forehead with its fingers spread, more or less to block Burly-Bear from my view, or maybe vice versa. I’m certain he’ll tidy up his memory of the scene so that it’s dominated by my “hysterics,” but let me make clear to all that it was his righteous, insistent,
and stubborn sermon that forced me to escalate, and let me make it equally clear that he knew quite well through every moment of it what effect he was having on me. He didn’t want to convince me of anything. He didn’t even want to justify his own actions. He just wanted to win the little bullshit skirmish we were having.

  And so he did win. Goody for him.

  To some people, winning is everything. I just feel lucky, whenever it occurs to me, that I am not one of those people.

  I slam the car door and he drives off and I go in. dickel is cleared out as expected. No note, but that’s not his style. As for how I’ll fill my lonely hours without him, I suppose I’ll be busy being harassed by Burly-Bear in a more official capacity soon. Rest assured he’ll be less clumsy in the role of the hostile aggressor.

  Somehow I can’t get up the energy to call Mr. Groin. He is just such a prick.

  GIVE IT TO ME STRAIGHT

  i.went.to.harvard @ February 1 08:14 pm

  Call the prick.

  proudblacktrannie @ February 1 08:15 pm

  Remember, luv, he’s your prick.

  hitman @ February 1 08:17 pm

  Uh, not to come off all shruggy over something that was clearly a BFD for you, but I’m not sure your fight with the cop sounds all that apocalyptic. I mean, you went a little bloody rag on account of the cops strong-arming your brother. Duh fuck’s wrong widdat? If Burly-clown ain’t stupid, and by my read he is not, by now he’s seeing that he walked his dick right into the old wood chipper back there, crowing about how he cleared your place out for him and you to have a little “space” without considering that maybe you actually like your own brother. Fact is, people get it, in the end, that you’re going to side with family.